Servicing

The Treasury Department's inspector general said while the OCC focused on loan workout policies at major servicers, its supervision from 2008 through 2010 was "not sufficient in scope or application to identify significant weaknesses in national banks' foreclosure documentation and processing functions."

The expanded Home Affordable Refinancing Program kicked into full speed during the first quarter with volumes doubling to 180,000 units compared to the prior period.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency "underestimated" the risk of poor foreclosure practices at national banks and did not devote enough examination resources to identify those problems, according to the agency's chief watchdog, the U.S. Treasury's inspector general.

The latest round of weaker-than-expected U.S. employment numbers has driven the long-term rate-indicative 10-year Treasury yield to yet another record low.

If you’re looking for a patch of brightness in the national job numbers that came out Friday morning look at the mortgage brokerage employment line: broker firms added 2,300 loan officers and other staffers to their payrolls in April.

The Government National Mortgage Association approved 35 issuer licenses last year and hopes to approve about the same this year, according to agency president Ted Tozer.

Employment in the residential finance sector fell to 266,100 full-time positions in April from 267,600 in March, a difference of about 1,500 jobs.

Abacus Federal Savings Bank and more than a dozen of its former employees are facing criminal charges related to a scheme in which it allegedly falsified information on mortgage applications so that unqualified borrowers could secure loans.

Newly initiated foreclosures by the Federal Housing Administration jumped 247% in April from a year earlier, while the overall number of foreclosure starts fell 3.1% in the same period.

Deloitte says that assets controlled by the shadow banking system—including asset- and mortgage-backed securities—have declined by more than 50% in the last four years, to $9.53 trillion at Dec. 31.