Compliance & Regulation

Two Marlboro, N.J. residents - an attorney and an investment broker - this week pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme to steal more than $2.6 million by filing fraudulent mortgage applications.

Marc Savitt is someone we call a "homer" - a fan who roots for the home team and in this case that home team happens to be mortgage brokers. Savitt, the former head of NAMB, has long believed that the brokerage sector would come back (at least to some degree) and that we would see a trend toward nonbank and depository loan officers switching over to broker status.

Vendor ClosingCorp said Thursday it is making available a service that helps credit unions handle good faith estimate disclosures.

The acting commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration this week blasted news reports that claim Bank of America Corp. was essentially bailing out the agency's mortgage insurance fund.

Woodward Asset Capital has made technological advancements to their two software solutions enabling small banks to have the capability to access these tools to monitor fraudulent activities in the distressed sales marketplace.

An upcoming legal decision related to whether a proposed $8.5 billion Countrywide RMBS settlement returns to New York state court could affect the speed at which a deal moves forward — or whether it happens at all, according to a new report from Barclays.

The Obama Administration is pushing back against a recent news report that concluded U.S. taxpayers will subsidize the roughly $25 billion mortgage settlement.

Fannie Mae has purposely kept its mouth shut regarding its investment in servicing rights - especially its $74 billion MSR purchase from Bank of America this past fall which cost the GSE about 50 basis points. But its days of being super secretive may be coming to an end.

Britton & Koontz Bank in Natchez, Miss., has been ordered by its regulator to immediately take steps to reduce the level of risk in its real estate loan portfolio.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency wants to make GSE loan buyback policies more transparent, eliminating uncertainty in the secondary market while encouraging lenders to fund new loans.