Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

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CFPB Proposes ‘Substantive’ Changes to its Mortgage Servicing Rule

By Thomas Ressler [e-mail]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to make significant, but unspecified, changes to its mortgage servicing rule sometime this fall, in response to concerns raised by the industry. The news was revealed in a “spring” rulemaking agenda released Thursday afternoon.

The agency said it is “considering concerns raised by industry participants regarding a few substantive aspects of the mortgage servicing rule that we used in August 2016. These aspects may be posing particular complexities for implementation that were not anticipated in the course of the original rulemaking. We expect to issue a proposal to make one or more substantive changes to the rule in response to these concerns this fall.”

The good news for the industry is that the CFPB is, once again, responding to the concerns of market participants, which bodes well not only for improved compliance with the mortgage servicing regulation, but also because it signifies an increased willingness on the part of the bureau to engage in a “do over.”

And the bad news: another proposal will translate into more changes, including additional time and money spent reviewing and commenting on the proposal, then arranging for more in-house information-technology work or third-party vendor contract work, then more systems testing, then more staff training.

That being said, another silver lining in the spring rule making agenda is a distinct absence of any other major new mortgage rules that are in the pipeline or under consideration.