Professional development

Lenders and servicers that haven't complied with the Federal Housing Administration's lower cap on late fees better do it soon.

The House Financial Services Committee approved a bill this week that would increase the mobility of mortgage originators who take a new job across state lines or move from a federally regulated bank to a nonbank.

Lenders ready to court millennials as potential clients, and employees, can find common ground more easily than they might assume.

Freddie Mac has released a new Web tool aimed at servicers.

New services seek to replace lender processes that often involve manually updated spreadsheets and other efforts pieced together to meet steepening regulatory requirements for vendor management.

Millennials are on the verge of becoming the largest cohort of homebuyers. If lenders want to gain and retain their trust, they must start by recruiting a younger, more diverse and gender-balanced workforce.

Despite the outcry prompted by lenders' commercials during Super Bowl 50, customer satisfaction surveys indicate borrowers are more than ready for the ease and convenience of digital options.

A number of factors, including the shift back to a purchase market and burgeoning Hispanic and millennial demographics, are expected to spur mortgage industry hiring across the board in 2016, with one major exception: appraisers.

The American Bankers Association has renewed its alliance with Freddie Mac to provide origination and servicing assistance to banks.

There has been a sharp decrease in the number of incoming appraisers, largely due to outdated and untenable certification requirements. Here's how to fix the situation.

Though regulation-mandated technology upgrades give vendors little time to rest, the growing acceptance of data standardization should appeal to both lenders and regulators.

A plan by the government-sponsored enterprises to begin collecting the new Closing Disclosure data is designed to promote Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's loan quality goals. But the initiative may also prompt broader use of e-signatures and paperless processing.

The New York Department of Financial Services has ordered NewDay Financial to surrender its New York State license, as the fallout continues from its exam-cheating scandal.

Corporate culture can be a powerful tool for a good leader — and a poison pill for a bad one.

Amid a renewed focus on improving customer service and the overall borrowing experience, lenders surveyed by National Mortgage News indicate a strong interest in customer-relationship management software, but remain tepid about electronic signatures.

The added clarity provided by the Federal Housing Administration's revised single-family handbook comes at the expense of lender flexibility to get loans qualified, including a popular workaround for borrowers with deferred student loan debt.

While regulatory pressures remain top of mind for the mortgage industry, lenders surveyed by National Mortgage News are shifting their attention from defensive-minded compliance initiatives to ones that improve companies' ability to compete.

After years of plowing resources into compliance projects, mortgage lenders surveyed by National Mortgage News are foregrounding core business initiatives in their plans for the coming year. High on to-do lists are projects aimed at improving the customer experience and seizing new business opportunities.

Accurately capturing mortgage data to meet new federal regulators is a top challenge for banks and credit unions, according to Wolters Kluwer Financial Services.

2016 Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina telegraphs a message that the mortgage industry would do well to heed.