Industry Briefs Dec. 3, 2020
ReverseVision Upates Documents to Support LIBOR to CMT Transition
ReverseVision, San Diego, updated all documents that reference an index to support both the Constant Maturity Treasury (CMT) and London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR) indexes.
The update was made in response to Ginnie Mae’s All Participant Memorandum (APM) 20-12, which deems LIBOR-based adjustable rate HECM loans not securitized on or after January 1, 2021, as ineligible for pooling regardless of their origination or FHA case number assignment date. Adjustable rate HECMs that rely on the CMT index will be eligible for pooling without restriction. The LIBOR index is expected to sunset at the end of 2021.
States Title Awarded Predictive Machine Learning Patent to Support Instant Real Estate Closing
States Title, San Francisco, was issued a patent for “Predictive Machine Learning Models” by the U.S. Patent Office. This is the third patent that States Title has been awarded for machine learning.
The patent involves the process of closing a real estate transaction to identify any loans currently encumbering a property. Parsing messy and incomplete property records to surface outstanding loans is a point of friction on many transactions, and a task that has required significant time and expertise from escrow officers. Patent 10,755,184 helps to define States Title’s role to solve this problem using machine learning.
SoftWorks AI, Tavant Partner on Intelligent Document Automation
SoftWorks AI, Forest Hills, N.Y., an AI and computer vision-based mortgage automation firm, partnered with Tavant, a Silicon Valley-based provider of AI-powered digital lending technologies.
SoftWorks AI’s mortgage document automation capabilities will now be integrated with Tavant’s document ingestion platform, FinCapture, providing organizations across the mortgage ecosystem with data automation capabilities. Integrating the SoftWorks AI platform enables automated extraction of data from transactional loan documents. Documents are instantly recognized to ensure quality, validity and type, thereby enabling lenders to complete normally time-consuming reviews in seconds.
CFPB Sues DMB Financial LLC for Alleged Regulatory Violations
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a lawsuit against DMB Financial, LLC. The Bureau alleges that DMB violated the Telemarketing Sales Rule and the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 in connection with its debt-settlement and debt-relief services.
DMB, which has its principal place of business in Beverly, Mass., offers to renegotiate, settle or otherwise alter the terms of unsecured debts owed by consumers to creditors or debt collectors. The Bureau’s complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, alleges that DMB engaged in abusive and deceptive acts or practices in violation of the TSR. These allegedly unlawful activities include requesting and receiving fees before it performed its promised services and before consumers started payments under any debt settlement. The Bureau also alleges that, after settling individual debts, DMB collected fees based on increased debt amounts after enrollment rather than the amount of each debt at the time of enrollment.
Insellerate Launches DATA IE
Insellerate, Newport Beach, Calif., released DATA IE, which allows lenders to better serve their customers by turning borrower data into actionable insights and intelligent engagement.
DATA IE delivers data insights, leverages that data to enhance borrower engagement and provides personalized outreach to enhance borrower relationships while delivering timely messaging throughout the borrower process. It enables loan officers to craft the right message at the right time with the right offer through intelligent data and engagement, resulting in timelier and more personalized engagement, enhanced borrower retention, and higher conversions.
CFPB Finalizes Advisory Opinions Policy; Announces Two New Advisory Opinions
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week issued its final Advisory Opinions Policy to publicly address regulatory uncertainty in the Bureau’s existing regulations and provide guidance to entities on outstanding regulatory uncertainty. Under the final Policy, entities seeking to comply with regulatory requirements can submit a request to the Bureau where uncertainty exists. Regulatory certainty promotes compliance if the law applies and avoids unnecessary compliance costs if the law does not.
Under the final Policy, any person or entity can submit a request for an advisory opinion via email to advisoryopinion@cfpb.gov . The Bureau will review the submissions received, prioritize certain requests for response, and issue opinions with a description of the incoming request. The Bureau may also decide to issue advisory opinions on its own initiative. To increase transparency, the Bureau will publish all advisory opinions in the Federal Register and on its website at: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/compliance/advisory-opinion-program/.
“As explained in the final Policy, when selecting requests for consideration, the Bureau will prioritize open questions within the Bureau’s purview that can legally be addressed through an interpretive rule,” the CFPB said. “The Bureau intends to further evaluate potential topics for advisory opinions based on additional factors, including: alignment with the Bureau’s statutory objectives; size of the benefit offered to consumers by resolution of the interpretive issue; known impact on the actions of other regulators; and impact on available Bureau resources.”
In addition to the final Policy, the Bureau issued an advisory opinion to clarify that certain education loan products that refinance or consolidate a consumer’s pre-existing federal or federal and private, education loans meet the definition of “private education loan” in Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z and are subject to the disclosure and other requirements in subpart F of Regulation Z. Lender compliance with these requirements will enhance the protection of borrowers who have taken out private educational loans.
A copy of the final advisory opinion program can be found here: https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_advisory-opinion_policy_2020-11.pdf.
MCT Upgrades Pool Optimizer Technology
Mortgage Capital Trading Inc., San Diego, debuted upgraded MCTlive! Pool Optimizer functionality. The technology enables secondary marketing managers to use actual cash window execution for optimization on each individual loan rather than using a dealer survey for spec pay-ups.
The MCTlive! Pool Optimizer involves both the cash window commitment process as well as MBS optimization, rather than solely MBS pooling or delivery, allowing for full pricing granularity specific to all available executions. The cloud-based, scalable technology infrastructure of MCTlive! Supports analysis of the millions of possible combinations. Calculations are made on real-time spec pool pay-ups with MCT’s API connectivity.
Fitch Ratings: U.S. RMBS Mortgage Originators Slowly Restart Non-QM Production
Fitch Ratings, New York, said mortgage originators are slowly returning to various non-agency programs previously suspended in response to economic stress caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The report noted coronavirus pandemic forced many originators, particularly those offering non-qualified mortgage programs, to halt operations in 2Q20 as national unemployment spiked. However, non-agency lending activity has increased and private label securitization has received a boost over the past two months.
“Both originators and aggregators are looking to take advantage of more favorable market conditions for RMBS issuance,” said Managing Director Roelof Slump. This has led to new and updated operational reviews of multiple companies in Fitch’s report. The updated report now reflects a total of 70 reviewed entities.
