Mortgage service providers continue to bring products to market that will help lenders comply with increasing regulatory requirements. Meantime, an industry trade group is asking Congress for relief.
On May 14, NAMB President John Councilman testified at the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Finance hearing, TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure: Examining the Costs and Benefits of
Changes to the Real Estate Settlement Process.
In a transcript of his prepared testimony, the head of the National Association of Mortgage Professionals urged lawmakers to address the “double-count” issue for mortgage brokers that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 created through the Qualified Mortgage Rule.
“NAMB continues to be very concerned that the difference between the lender and broker QM points and fees cap is harming consumers,” Councilman said in a May 20 press statement. “Lower income consumers who are seeking a loan below $150,000 will likely have difficulty finding brokers who can do their loan. After lender fees are added into the overall fees, the broker pays their originator, and then the processing fees are added, these loans would actually cost the broker money to originate.”
To address this situation, NAMB recommended not including creditor-paid compensation to a mortgage broker company as part of the three percent points and fees calculations on QM loans.
Additionally, NAMB voiced its concern over the integrated disclosure rule, which goes into effect Aug. 1. The new rule will affect borrowers’ abilities to look around for home loans due the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s “near-zero tolerances” on the rule.
The association said it supports an enforcement grace period until Jan. 1, 2016.
Meanwhile, on the service provider front, Arch MI, FirstFunding Inc. and Freedom Wholesale Mortgage are sponsoring and hosting a free training seminar on June 2 for loan originators who are looking for more TRID rule expertise. The TILA RESPA Integrated Disclosure Seminar, being held at the Marriott Charlotte South Park Hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina, will address the impact of the rule and show originators how to train their partners in the real estate industry. Ginger Bell, Morf Media Inc.’s senior vice president of e-learning, will lead the course. An online version of the seminar will be available at http://morflearning.com/.
Dallas-based MRG Document Technologies revealed completion of its software system to handle integrated disclosures. The May 27 announcement also mentioned that its compliance packages and testing plus its calculations also were ready for handling the TRID rule.
The results of a survey of mortgage professionals announced on May 26 by eLynx revealed several survey participants would depend on manually entered information from settlement services entities to create the new Closing Disclosure form beyond their implementation deadline. As well, the data and document management service provider said surveyed lenders worried about disclosure errors from manual entries, but eLynx products such as its electronic closing network, dubbed eCN, could help quell those fears.
“If the settlement services provider can generate a Closing Disclosure in a PDF format, eLynx can extract the data and transfer it to the eLynx Electronic Closing Network, eCN,” said Sharon Matthews, chief executive officer and president of eLynx. “From there, the lender can combine it with loan-specific information from their loan origination system, compare it to previous disclosures and create the Closing Disclosure.”
The TRID-ready module for Motivation, Motivity Solution Inc.’s platform for mortgage business intelligence, was released to help home loan providers keep compliant with the new disclosure rules, a news statement last week said. Free to all Motavation clients, the statement noted that almost half of Motivity’s customers preparing for the regulatory deadline already put the module’s embedded analytics to use.
A couple days earlier, Stewart Lender Services announced its Due Diligence Solution Suite. Stewart upgraded its due diligence real estate transaction system and integrated several services to create the new platform. Included in the suite are tools for clearing transaction conditions, solutions for credit underwriting and tailored products for valuation and title searches. Tools for evaluating non-performing loans and rating agencies along with products for reviewing quality controls and regulatory compliance also were incorporated into the solution suite.
Risk management firm Comergence issued a recent statement indicating that Open Mortgage has signed on to use Comergence’s REALM, a loan originator due diligence database.
Elsewhere, document solution provider DocuTech Corp. recently announced that Network Funding LP selected ConformX to provide disclosure fulfillment up front and to ensure lender compliance across all government levels.
RES.NET recently reported that demand for its compliance tools has risen with the increase in compliance burden. Using specialized and customizable portals for each party involved in the home-purchase process, RES.NET said it creates a virtual, common meeting ground aimed at improving workflow and improving communication across all parties.
