The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has expressed serious concerns with legislation passed by the House Financial Services Committee that would create a consumer financial protection agency. MBA Chairman Robert E. Story Jr., issued the following statement: "For a number of years, MBA has been out front calling for tough, uniform national lending standards to protect consumers. Earlier this year, we came forth with our own proposal that would close the regulatory gaps by establishing a federal regulator for independent mortgage banks.Read more

Take action now! Call your House Financial Services Committee representative and ask him or her to support the following three amendments to HR 3126, the “Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009.” This bill is currently being considered by the House Financial Services Committee.Read more

In an Oct. 14 letter to the U.S. Committee on Financial Services, Reps. Barney Frank and Spencer Bachus, the National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB), along with the American Bankers Association, Consumer Bankers Association, Consumer Mortgage Coalition, Financial Services Roundtable, Housing Policy Council, Mortgage Bankers Association, National Association of Federal Credit Unions and the Real Estate Services Providers Council Inc., have shown their support for an initiative by Rep. Judy Biggert that would stagger the U.S.Read more

With the coming of fall, we will experience many changes, and I don’t mean only in the weather … Congress has concluded its summer recess and has returned to Washington, D.C. Without going into detail on each issue, the following are a few issues that the National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB) is working on.Read more

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has announced that they have sent a letter to House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank and Ranking Member Spencer Bachus outlining the association's concerns with HR 3126, The Consumer Financial Services Protection Agency (CFPA) Act. Chief among those concerns is that the bill fails to empower the CFPA to establish uniform national standards that will regulate all lenders, and protect all borrowers consistently, regardless of where they live. Read more

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has submitted testimony to the House Financial Services Committee for its hearing titled, "Perspectives on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency." In its statement, MBA endorses an approach to protecting consumers that incorporates parts of the committee's proposals buttressed by pieces of MBA's Mortgage Improvement and Regulatory Act (MIRA). MIRA would assign regulation of non-depository mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers and implementation of a uniform mortgage lending standard to a federal prudential regulator.Read more

What’s in a name?
Juliet says, in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet:”

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”¹

Is a name just a contrived and meaningless convention?Read more