Joseph A. Smith Jr., Monitor of the National Mortgage Settlement (NMS), has released a summary of five reports he filed with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. This summary includes updates on compliance by Bank of America, Chase, Citi, Green Tree and Wells Fargo with the NMS mortgage servicing rules during the third and fourth quarters of 2014.
Joseph Smith reports in the Compliance Update that he and his professionals uncovered one failed test in the second half of 2014. Citi failed one of the new metrics Smith and the Monitoring Committee negotiated related to the loan modification process. Neither Bank of America, Chase, Green Tree nor Wells Fargo failed in any of the metrics tested in the second half of 2014.
“I am pleased to see that the servicers are adhering to the NMS’s servicing rules, which aim to give borrowers better experiences,” Smith said. “Among five servicers and over six months, only one failure was uncovered, and of the servicers who had earlier fails to address, the corrective actions put in place were successful. Green Tree completed eight corrective action plans (CAPs) to address the root causes of its previous fails. During the cure period, which is Green Tree’s chance to fix the issue, I found no evidence of any failures. Citi failed one of the new metrics the Monitoring Committee and I negotiated to address the loan modification process. It also implemented an approved CAP and cured the fail in the next quarter.”
Compliance Update does not include Ocwen’s compliance. In April, Smith reported issues he found with the integrity of Ocwen’s IRG and with letter-dating processes.
“My team is still in the process of reviewing Ocwen’s compliance testing for the first and second quarters of 2014. I will report to the Court and the public when I am confident that the results are complete. It is important that we take the time to verify the accuracy of Ocwen’s work,” Smith said.
Compliance Update summarizes the fifth set of compliance reports on four of the original parties to the Settlement—Bank of America, Chase, Citi and Wells Fargo. This is the third report on Green Tree.
