Compliance

One of the co-chairs of the new federal/state Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group is preparing to file cases in the next few weeks against Wall Street firms involved in the packaging and selling of MBS.

JPMorgan Chase late last week told a federal court in Wichita that NCUA's negligence suit against top executives of WesCorp Federal Credit Union proves it was the shortcomings of those executives - and not any misrepresentations by the Wall Street bank's sales force in the sale of MBS - that caused the failure of WesCorp and three other corporate credit unions.

Identity theft continues to be a major problem across the country as scammers are creating schemes to steal the identifications and Social Security numbers of individuals in order to collect money for their own needs. Luckily, these fraudsters are being caught by the Department of Justice before prolonging their scams.

The New York Times ran an editorial on Sunday, Jan. 15 on mortgage fraud. Now correct me if I am wrong, but I thought newspapers were supposed to print the news. There is nothing new about this piece, which once again points out that some banks are to blame for the current crisis.

The new collaboration between the federal government and certain states to investigate pre-crisis mortgage fraud will have 55 dedicated attorneys, investigators, analysts and support staff, officials said Friday.

Both criminal prosecution and civil sanctions will be used to go after those responsible for securitization abuses, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday as government officials involved in the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group under President Obama's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force formally met for the first time.

The long-running negotiations on a settlement between large mortgage servicers and the state attorneys general have been dragging on too long.

The lending industry's troubles with a controversial type of insurance coverage appear to be spreading to new areas. In recent weeks New York State's Department of Financial Services has issued subpoenas to more than 20 mortgage servicers, a dozen insurers and 20 affiliated insurance agencies, according to someone familiar with the investigation.

I watched the State of the Union speech Tuesday and came away thinking no real "mortgage" surprises tonight except for two: Obama not using the word "mortgage broker" once, and the formation of the DOJ fraud task force on securitizing loans. But what about the "The State of the Mortgage Union"?

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Housing Administration is changing the way it monitors the loan performance of its largest lenders as part of a rule to clarify and codify its indemnification practices.

Investors considering nonperforming loan purchases are increasingly concerned about title chains and finding related concerns that need to be cleaned up, according to a new manager at one vendor in this business.

Data provider CoreLogic has released an enhanced version of its RiskModel, which is a commercial analytics application utilized by the major banks and regulators to project future RMBS prepayments, defaults, losses and cash flows.

Amid lingering questions about the fate of a broad mortgage servicing settlement, many see the creation of a joint task force to probe mortgage abuses as hope that those negotiating the settlement can work out their differences.

RiskFinder Distress enables users to track and analyze key distress events throughout the life cycle of a loan. This computer product provides investors and lenders the information needed to evaluate risk, determine the impact of distress sales on loss severity estimates, drive loss mitigation strategies and identify markets that are starting to recover.

HUD and Detroit mayor Dave Bing have released a transition plan to return the city's housing commission to local control, a potential sign of improvement in one of the most distressed local U.S. markets.

Citigroup Inc. will no longer purchase "medium or high-risk" loans that could result in buyback requests from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, in the bank's latest effort to improve the quality of mortgages it buys from correspondent lenders, according to an internal memo obtained by American Banker.

The value at risk metric employed by every major banking institution offered the appearance of safety until taxpayer bailouts were the only option to save the financial system. Today, regulators are examining historical factors to determine what defines a "safe" mortgage in order to calculate capital adequacy and risk retention requirements.

A while back I read a story about people who have won the lottery twice and three times. Some play the same numbers. Some invested tens of thousands of dollars. One couple won twice in one day. Could you imagine? Imagine winning just once, then having your numbers called the second time, only to have them put back because the person reading the numbers decided the prize should go to someone who had never won before.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said President Obama's decision to expand investigations into home lending and sales of MBS could stop settlement talks with the states over foreclosure practices.

A major hurdle for the mortgage industry in 2011 that may continue to pose a significant risk this year is ineffective quality control. Interthinx identified two defects in the outsourced quality control programs of lenders that affected residential mortgage loan files—missing documentation and inaccurate information.