Compliance & Regulation

Amid lingering questions about the fate of a broad mortgage servicing settlement, many see the creation of a joint task force to probe mortgage abuses as hope that those negotiating the settlement can work out their differences.

RiskFinder Distress enables users to track and analyze key distress events throughout the life cycle of a loan. This computer product provides investors and lenders the information needed to evaluate risk, determine the impact of distress sales on loss severity estimates, drive loss mitigation strategies and identify markets that are starting to recover.

A new national refinancing program unveiled by President Obama earlier in the week will rely on the Federal Housing Administration to refinance private and GSE mortgages, according to a report from Federal Financial Analytics in Washington.

HUD and Detroit mayor Dave Bing have released a transition plan to return the city's housing commission to local control, a potential sign of improvement in one of the most distressed local U.S. markets.

Citigroup Inc. will no longer purchase "medium or high-risk" loans that could result in buyback requests from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, in the bank's latest effort to improve the quality of mortgages it buys from correspondent lenders, according to an internal memo obtained by American Banker.

The value at risk metric employed by every major banking institution offered the appearance of safety until taxpayer bailouts were the only option to save the financial system. Today, regulators are examining historical factors to determine what defines a "safe" mortgage in order to calculate capital adequacy and risk retention requirements.

Trapped between conflicting requirements that indicate collapse and abolition prospects, the debate over the future status of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is emerging as one of the year’s biggest concerns for insiders and academics.

A while back I read a story about people who have won the lottery twice and three times. Some play the same numbers. Some invested tens of thousands of dollars. One couple won twice in one day. Could you imagine? Imagine winning just once, then having your numbers called the second time, only to have them put back because the person reading the numbers decided the prize should go to someone who had never won before.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said President Obama's decision to expand investigations into home lending and sales of MBS could stop settlement talks with the states over foreclosure practices.

A major hurdle for the mortgage industry in 2011 that may continue to pose a significant risk this year is ineffective quality control. Interthinx identified two defects in the outsourced quality control programs of lenders that affected residential mortgage loan files—missing documentation and inaccurate information.