Ocwen Financial Corporation President Ronald M. Faris, has testified before Congress, voicing the mortgage servicer's support of the Obama Administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) and recommended enhancements that Ocwen believes would make the program more effective at preventing foreclosures and helping distressed homeowners.Read more

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) moved to protect distressed homeowners from the promoters of bogus foreclosure rescue and mortgage modification services by proposing a new rule that would forbid companies to charge upfront for these services. Instead, companies could only collect payment after providing services.Read more

Many exotic adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) will recast in 2010, leading to a mortgage crisis as large as sub-prime in the New Year, according to the Consumer Mortgage Audit Center. “We’ve spoken to Florida attorneys who sit at the forefront of the U.S. foreclosure crisis and have learned that 53 percent expect recasting ARMs to present a mortgage crisis as large as sub-prime and 61 percent expect to work on more loan modifications in 2010 than they did in 2009,” said Sylvia Alayon, vice president of operations for the Consumer Mortgage Audit Center.Read more

Amidst all of the discussion of the mortgage crisis and the implementation of the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC), there has been lots of finger pointing, concerning who was at fault for the meltdown and what should and should not be done to fix the problem(s). Unless you have been in seclusion for the past year, you have heard of the attempts of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to keep appraisers separated from loan originators.Read more

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) is on the way and its gestation stage will not be as long as many expect.¹ Although its nascence will endure the inevitable crucible of politics churned out by the Congress, federal and state regulatory bodies, bank and non-bank industry lobbyists, and eminent legal scholars,² the actors in this drama seem to argue, at one extreme, for a CFPA with robust oversight and regulatory enforcement authorities, and, at the other extreme, some kind of oversight agency that reviRead more

Focusing on implications from the sub-prime mortgage crisis and approaches to address future crises, actuaries in the U.S. have expressed the need for enterprise-wide risk management approaches through business practices and regulatory enhancements. The Society of Actuaries (SOA) and the Joint Risk Management Section have sponsored a new paper, “The Financial Crisis and Lessons for Insurers,” providing further insights on the causes of the subprime crisis, and subsequently the financial crisis.Read more