Compliance

Three banks suing MBIA Inc. accused the bond insurer of deliberately withholding damaging financial projections from insurance regulators who were evaluating its transformation.

Credit unions could be hurt by a proposal that would allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to write down the principal on millions of underwater mortgages, industry leaders warned this week.

Like many controversies, mortgage lenders' use of force-placed home insurance arose from what was once a well established and unquestioned practice. For many years, homeowners who failed to maintain property insurance could count on their banks buying it for them and passing on the cost.

A lack of comprehensive planning by the Treasury Department and an inability to enlist servicer participation has stymied a federal program that provided billions in borrower assistance to state housing agencies, according to an inspector general's report.

Although Edward DeMarco, the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, did not officially decide whether to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to pursue a broad principal forgiveness program, his remarks last Tuesday left little doubt he would ultimately reject such an approach.

If your Loss Mitigation and REO Departments interact with listing agents in the traditional fashion, then you are enabling fraud.

The foreclosure crisis is loosening the traditionally strong tie homeowners have with their homes. New findings from FICO's latest quarterly survey of bank risk professionals indicate one way the slow recovery will affect distressed homeowners in 2012 is increased propensity for "strategic default."

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau detailed a slew of new mortgage servicing rules last week that it plans to propose this summer, including a call for expanded disclosures for payments and fees and new policies in how banks must handle customer accounts.

Following an undercover investigation that found "disturbing evidence" of discrimination in the management of real estate owned properties in communities of color by a number of undisclosed banks the National Fair Housing Alliance has filed a federal housing discrimination complaint against Wells Fargo & Co. and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

Over the last 10 years, $23.7-billion State Employees' Credit Union in Raleigh, N.C. has not had a single mortgage handed back to it by an investor due to poor underwriting.

Through the first three quarters of 2011 The Golden 1 Credit Union in Sacramento, Calif. had by far the most mortgage originations of any CU in California and it is actively advertising for more.

Mortgage originations today contain many of the same risk characteristics as found in years past, but Teresa Halleck said there is one important difference.

Even though third-party due diligence has always been performed on whole loans, the providers of these services have more skin-in-the-game now that rating agencies have very stringent requirements.

The current vice president of the Hells Angels' Sonoma (CA) Chapter has to serve a year in jail and pay $130,000 in restitution to SunTrust Mortgage for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme.

After having gone through an enormous disruption characterized by unexpected deterioration and massive losses, investors in residential mortgage-backed securities have a number of reasons to feel unsettled.

Joseph Smith has assumed his duties as the monitor for the $26 billion foreclosure settlement and he will be responsible for making sure five mega-servicers live up to the terms of the agreement and reform their servicing and foreclosure practices.

Non-agency MBS investors should look for bonds with smaller loan sizes in a structure that is levered to severity, said Amherst Securities Group analysts in a recent report.

If the new RMBS deals issued in the past week give an indication of what the non-agency market space will look like, then it is clear that only the best will do.

The potential sale of the Maiden Lane III (ML III) assets might signal that the Federal Reserve is making its move to take liquidity out of the system, securitization experts said Thursday.

There have not been very many weeks yet this year where the markets have not been roiled about something, and the last week was not one of them either.