Risk management

The Internal Revenue Service's indefinite delay of a deadline for a new authentication procedure has headed off concerns about potential interruptions in mortgage production.

Lenders and servicers haven't faced the same scrutiny over data security as their peers in retail and other financial services sectors. But mortgage companies must remain vigilant, as the extensive data they collect can expose consumers to identity theft if it got in the wrong hands.

Recently launched low-down-payment mortgage programs are presenting new opportunities for fraud. But new data and monitoring tools can help lenders mitigate those risks.

Bayview Asset Management is securitizing $159.6 million of securities that transfer the risk of credit losses on mortgages insured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

As Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to experiment with up-front risk sharing deals, some small mortgage lenders are worried they will be left out of the action.

Within hours of taking the reins at Wells Fargo, new chief Tim Sloan pledged to finish the reforms begun by his predecessor, John Stumpf, who stepped aside Wednesday in an attempt to quiet the phony-accounts scandal that has rocked the company.

The Wells Fargo phony-accounts scandal is barely five weeks old, but it felt like John Stumpf had been hanging on for five years.

The No. 3 U.S. bank by assets has made a change at the top after a snowballing scandal involving the creation of fraudulent accounts.

Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. Unfortunately, it's taken years of widespread regulatory upheaval for mortgage servicing to find it necessary to start thinking about technology innovation.

Servicers have long skimped on technology investment, leaving legacy systems that can't keep pace with compliance demands. But rising costs and a new round of regulations are compelling both servicers and vendors to finally address these deficiencies.

Cybersecurity precautions often focus on preventing a data breach. But what if those precautions aren't enough? Here's a look at steps lenders and servicers can take now to prepare their response in the event of a catastrophic data breach.

With the myriad home price indices available to the mortgage industry, it's difficult to determine which offers the most cost-effective insights about a particular market. Granularity is a key selling point, but not a one-size-fits-all solution.

Two decades of experience with offshoring has shown that shifting operations work from knowledgeable, local workers to people in another country with oftentimes limited training comes with risks — of errors, of misunderstandings and of security lapses.

Though they have a reputation for being precarious, Federal Housing Administration loans are leading the decline in mortgage application defect risk, according to First American Financial Corp.

Strong home sales are boosting originations of Federal Housing Administration loans and opening the door for first-time buyers — developments that could portend the mortgage insurance agency receiving a positive report from auditors this fall.

Artificial intelligence like IBM's Watson may not make bank compliance officers obsolete, but it could mean far fewer of them will be needed in the future, focused on higher-level tasks.

IBM will purchase Promontory Financial Group — a consultancy so influential it has been dubbed the industry's "shadow regulator" — in a move that could extend artificial intelligence into every aspect of banking.

Eight years after high-risk, deceptive lending practices precipitated a near-meltdown of the global economy, we learned that at least 5,300 Wells Fargo employees created 2 million sham accounts that its customers apparently did not want, need or understand.

Now that Fannie Mae requires trended data credit reports for its automated underwriting system, will other secondary market players follow suit? If so, how soon?

Freddie Mac plans to say it will start a pilot program to increase the amount of risk it shares with private mortgage insurers.