The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is relying on an emphasis on standardized data to manage complaints it receives about mortgage industry participants and other rule making and regulatory activities.
Ren Essene, a senior policy analyst in the CFPB’s Office of Mortgage Markets, said the bureau received 2,300 mortgage-related complaints just in the month of December. Speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s technology conference in Phoenix this week, she said the only way to manage those complaints effectively is to use technology to improve efficiency and give responders more time to communicate with borrowers and the industry.
The CFPB will use data analysis to look for trends and patterns across complaint types and new reporting requirements to address what Essene called “deep flaws in the mortgage market.”
Many of the regulations prescribed in the Dodd-Frank Act have statutory January 2013 deadlines, so the CFPB is also working through its rule making process to go with those regulations. Essene expects public comment periods to open up this summer for those policies.
“The stakes are high and we're working very hard to get the rules out to you,” she said.
Another focus of the bureau is using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data to meet new reporting requirements and do additional analysis on market performance.
Quoting former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis that “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Essene said that “many of us believe transparency is important to reviving the market.”
Essene said loan-level data and new variables in the HMDA reporting requirements like underwriting criteria and loan features will aid in those efforts. To help the industry rapidly adopt to those requirements, Essene said the CFPB is thoroughly evaluating the standards laid out by the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization as the likely model for additional data mining.
“We're here to build an infrastructure for rigorous market analysis,” Essene said.
She added that the growth of homeownership in the 90s was due to automation and was a great success for the industry and “I'm looking forward to seeing what the next generation of technology is going to bring to the industry.”
