On December 21, 2018, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced its final policy guidance regarding the public disclosure of loan-level HMDA data collected under the 2015 HMDA rule. The guidance is effective for HMDA data that will be published by the CFPB in 2019 for 2018 reportable mortgage activity. The CFPB will disclose most [...]
On October 23, 2018, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced $100 million in civil money penalties against Capital One Bank based on deficiencies in the bank’s Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) compliance program. The penalties are linked to Capital One’s failure to adequately respond to a 2015 Cease and Desist Order [...]
According to an exclusive report published by Reuters, Citigroup Inc. may be penalized for possible Fair Lending violations by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The regulators' scrutiny is related to Citigroup's "relationship pricing" program that offered discounts on mortgage interest rates to customers based on their deposit and investment balances held [...]
New York’s Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) has recommended that online lenders are subjected to the same scrutiny and regulations that traditional banks face. A bill signed by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo on June 1, 2017, required DFS to study online lending in New York State and submit a report of its findings. Superintendent Maria T. Vullo announced the [...]
On April 3, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) published a long-awaited update to Frequently Asked Questions Regarding the Customer Due Diligence Requirements for Financial Institutions. The questions are about Customer Due Diligence Requirements for Financial Institutions, published on May 11, 2016, as amended on September 29, 2017. FinCEN is labeling it the CDD Rule. The [...]
The CFPB on Wednesday issued its final rule modifying the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) regulations, which it says will provide added flexibility for mortgage lenders in the collection of consumer ethnicity and race information. Currently, the ECOA restricts lenders' ability to ask consumers about race, religion, nationality or sex except as it relates to the required collection [...]
The City of Philadelphia announced (HousingWire) on May 15, 2017 that it will sue one of the nation’s largest banks, Wells Fargo, for discriminatory lending practices against its minority residents which, in turn, caused harm to the City. This suit will be a major test of a recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court (Bank [...]
On Tuesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released its annual Fair Lending report. In this report, the CFPB summarizes its supervisory actions, rulemaking, guidance and other activities conducted during the 2016 calendar year. Following are some of the observations that are noted in the report related to the agency’s supervisory actions for 2016: Many [...]
On March 28, 2017, Wells Fargo & Co announced (Bloomberg, March 28, 2017) that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) downgraded the firm in its assessment of the firm’s performance under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Under CRA, depository institutions are evaluated to determine their responsiveness in meeting the needs of low- [...]
Aaron Wider, the former owner and CEO of the mortgage bank HTFC Corp. in Garden City, N.Y., was sentenced by a U.S. District judge to 150 months’ imprisonment for conspiracy to commit bank fraud for defrauding financial institutions out of over $30 million in mortgage proceeds. Wider, who was convicted on Jan. 25, 2016, was [...]
