Compliance

Fannie Mae and Citibank officials were developing a principal reduction pilot program that was supposed to go live in July 2010 when it was “mysteriously” stopped and later terminated.

n this season of high political drama it is not really surprising that potential candidates, as well as a myriad of federal agencies, are all jockeying for the most complimentary spot in the limelight. The National Fair Housing Alliance is no exception.

Loss severities on U.S. commercial mortgage-backed securities have reached 45%, according to Fitch, which said this is a point at which they could plateau.

Compliance within the financial services industry impacts the entire organization and is key to the bottom line for firms currently operating in the mortgage space. Comprehensive compliance risk management strategies are required to meet compliance obligations and also protect customers, employees and shareholders.

About 9,000 title industry insiders participated in the Ernst survey and 40% of respondents felt that fraud in real estate transactions had increased within the last year.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency hired Denise Dunckel as a senior associate director for the office of congressional affairs and communications.

A surge in mortgage lending drove strong profits for banks of all sizes in the first quarter, with some banks attributing the improvement to new regulations.

Ally Financial, in a new public filing, finally admits that it is weighing bankruptcy protection for its struggling residential mortgage division which is facing potential additional losses of up to $4 billion.

For a year now the government owned Ally Financial has kept mum on the idea of throwing ResCap into bankruptcy protection but the self imposed gag order came off late Friday night, squirreled away in the folds of a new 148-page SEC filing.

The National Credit Union Administration is preparing to ease the reins on the use of financial derivatives and allow more credit unions to deal in a variety of instruments that would help them hedge interest rate risk, including interest rate swaps, caps, floors, options and collars.

It's no secret that there are signs of life in the 'flow' servicing market, but will these green shoots of a revival turn brown?

By now, thousands of readers have viewed our coverage (both in print and online) of eWarehouseOne, the mysterious warehouse lender that appears to have collected at least $250,000 in application and good faith checks, and doesn’t have a whole lot of lines of credit to show for it. After two months of investigating the company and talking to roughly 20 sources, we’ve come to the conclusion that the man running the show is Tom Reynolds, once listed as EVP in charge of warehouse lending. The problem is this: none of the account executives hired by the company (some of whom have left) have ever met Reynolds, though they’ve spoken to him on the phone.

After the conclusion of a successful pilot program, the Internal Revenue Service is planning to roll out the production version of its electronic signature capabilities for Form 4506-T by the end of 2012, according to officials who detailed the plans during the MBA tech show in Phoenix this week.

For every positive step taken by lenders and the law enforcement community to stop people from scamming the system, it seems that fraudsters are one step ahead, experts conceded at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Fraud Issues Conference in Phoenix this week.

The judge’s decision in a hearing the New York State Supreme Court held Tuesday afternoon on the $8.5 billion Countrywide Financial Corp. settlement appears to have kept the proceedings shorter than they otherwise might have been.

It's been a bumpy ride in recent quarters, but loan-loss provisions have gradually tapered off and early signs from first-quarter reports suggest that lower provisions may be here to stay.

The Securities and Exchange Commission late Tuesday reached a settlement with H&R Block subsidiary Option One Mortgage Corp., over charges that the now-defunct subprime lender misled investors that bought some of the firm’s MBS.

Lenders are getting smarter about uncovering fraud before putting bad loans on their books, according to the latest figures from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking input for a study that could pave the way for new limits on consumer arbitration clauses.

The FBI mortgage fraud caseload is on track to pass last year’s volume and possibly even the record total reached in fiscal 2010.