From House Speaker Paul Ryan to Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, these 10 candidates for the House of Representatives attracted the most in campaign donations from the mortgage industry.

The mortgage industry remains deeply uneasy with efforts by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and their regulator to experiment with front-end credit risk transfers, with some arguing it helps borrowers and lenders, while others fear it will cut out small institutions.

In a move designed to help further calm lender fears about mortgage repurchase liability, Fannie Mae is preparing to offer immediate representation and warranty relief to lenders that use its suite of automated quality assurance technology.

BancorpSouth in Tupelo, Miss., reported higher third-quarter earnings after net interest and fee revenue improved from a year earlier.

Lenders asking whether bank loans are safe are missing the point and should instead be more concerned with the standard they apply when underwriting them.

The Internal Revenue Service's indefinite delay of a deadline for a new authentication procedure has headed off concerns about potential interruptions in mortgage production.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau decried an appeals court ruling last week that found its single-director structure unconstitutional, saying the opinion was "wrongly decided" and had "no basis in the text of the Constitution or in Supreme Court case law."

Lenders and servicers haven't faced the same scrutiny over data security as their peers in retail and other financial services sectors. But mortgage companies must remain vigilant, as the extensive data they collect can expose consumers to identity theft if it got in the wrong hands.

By decreasing costs through technology, outsourcing and scale, servicers not only can give their margins a much-needed boost, but also set themselves up to reap rewards in the future.

Upcoming look-backs of key Dodd-Frank provisions like the Qualified Mortgage rule are unlikely to result in new regulatory changes. But any effort to revisit already-implemented rules should give cause for concern, legal experts warn.

While compliance costs continue to increase for lenders, the rising age of company owners is what's prompting many independent mortgage bankers to sell their companies.

To successfully respond to the most pressing challenges facing the mortgage industry right now, lenders and servicers must navigate issues of competition, governance, affordability and margins.

Independent mortgage bankers are concerned that if Congress votes to privatize the Common Securitization Platform, it could give large banks too much control over the real estate finance market.

Mortgage industry groups are frustrated by the lack of progress on real estate finance reform, and that spurred one group — the National Association of Home Builders — to endorse Congressional candidates for the first time.

A desire to own their own businesses led many loan officers to become mortgage brokers during the industry's growth period. As brokering regains its footing, that entrepreneurial spirit is making a comeback.

The Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization has launched a new portal for collaboration and communication across the industry and updated its website.

Franklin Codel, Wells Fargo's head of mortgage, will now oversee all consumer lending as part of a management shakeup that comes amid the bank's fake account scandal.

Condominium associations cannot afford to take on the potential legal risk that reporting delinquent borrowers to the credit bureaus would bring.

Within hours of taking the reins at Wells Fargo, new chief Tim Sloan pledged to finish the reforms begun by his predecessor, John Stumpf, who stepped aside Wednesday in an attempt to quiet the phony-accounts scandal that has rocked the company.

The Wells Fargo phony-accounts scandal is barely five weeks old, but it felt like John Stumpf had been hanging on for five years.