Compliance

The Obama Administration's efforts to expand a GSE refinancing program and reach a large number of underwater borrowers will depend on how far the Federal Housing Finance Agency will go in providing lenders relief from loan buy-backs, according to industry officials and analysts watching the effort.

Fearing that the megabanks might get off too easy in the multi-state mortgage settlement talks, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is preparing to file lawsuits against the nation's largest servicers for wrongfully foreclosing on customers.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency knew as early as 2009 about potentially abusive foreclosure practices and yet failed to take action to curb them, according to a watchdog report released Tuesday.

Efforts to negotiate a settlement between state attorneys general and the top five mortgage servicers collapsed late last week after California pulled out of the negotiations.

CoreLogic has launched a new credit report designed to provide consumer credit information that enhances existing credit bureau reports.

RBS Securities late last week asked a federal court in Los Angeles to dismiss securities claims against it by the National Credit Union Administration in the failure of WesCorp FCU, saying the now defunct wholesale institution was a sophisticated investor and knew the risks of investing in almost $1 billion of nonprime MBS.

The HUD inspector general wants the Federal Housing Administration to ban corporate officers from the FHA program if they have left a company that has not met its obligations to indemnify the government for delinquent loans.

Within weeks of issuing standards for repaying federal bailout funds, bank regulators relaxed those rules in late 2009 as Bank of America, Citigroup, and other large depositories hurriedly pushed to get out from under the government's thumb, according to a watchdog agency's new report.

Roughly $7.4 billion of fraudulent mortgages will be originated this year, a 40% decline from 2011, a decrease primarily due to significantly lower fundings volumes in 2011, according to a new report from CoreLogic.

A new report issued by the National Credit Union Administration blames the agency's Office of Corporate Credit Unions for failing to identify a high concentration of risky MBS at the now defunct Southwest Corporate Credit Union of Texas, a $12 billion institution.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating several residential servicing shops for abusive practices – including inaccurate payment records and charging excessive fees -- according to FTC associate director Joel Winston.

Keystone Asset Management has recently completed an audit that assures the company is complying with regulations within the mortgage servicing industry.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said there has been an 88% year-over-year increase in mortgage loan fraud suspicious activity reports filed in the second quarter.

Standard & Poor's, Moody's Corp. and Fitch Inc. won dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that their ratings of nonprime MBS were faulty and caused five Ohio public employee pension funds to buy into these money-losing investments.

A growing list of failed thrift reports is helping the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency learn how to avoid the mistakes made by the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Freddie Mac's restrictive repurchase review policy on defaulted loans may prevent the GSE from recouping "billions of dollars" in losses from lenders, according to a new investigative report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Risk mitigation provider Interthinx has launched its Quality Control Review Services product that combines the firm's automated technology platforms with loan-level audit expertise.

A licensed loan officer in North Carolina who worked for Beazer Mortgage Co. has been charged with three counts of mortgage fraud.

FACTS

Back in 2006, Fannie Mae officials knew that attorneys representing the GSE were filing false documents in foreclosure proceedings but did nothing about it, according a new inspector general report.