The improvement of mortgage disclosures is a "top priority" of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and was 'topic A' at a Treasury Department forum held Tuesday in Washington.
The meeting allowed consumer advocacy groups, housing counselors, financial literacy experts and mortgage companies to comment on the merging of the Truth-in-Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act mortgage disclosure forms.
"The feedback and ideas received at this and future meetings with additional shareholders will be used to expedite the design and testing of new draft mortgage disclosure forms for consumers," Treasury said in a statement.
Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner and Elizabeth Warren, assistant to the president and special advisor to the Treasury, hosted the forum.
"Moving quickly to improve mortgage disclosures is one of a series of steps we're taking to implement the historic consumer protections included in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law," Geithner said.
The CFPB implementation team is working with the Federal Reserve Board to merge the RESPA/TILA disclosures. They want to have a proposed consolidated form ready "well ahead of the Dodd-Frank Act's July 2012 statutory deadline," Treasury said.
