Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

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Many thought that with former Director Richard Cordray’s resignation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) would stop using its abusiveness authority in enforcement actions. After all, claims of abusiveness were the epitome of what critics derided as “regulation by enforcement,” as abusiveness was a new concept whose contours were not well defined. While that has largely proven true, there have been some exceptions. Last October, under then-Acting Director Mick Mulvaney, the CFPB issued a Consent Order against a payday lender that also offered check cashing services, which contained a single claim of abusiveness. That claim was based on the entity’s practice, when providing check-cashing services, of using check proceeds to pay off outstanding payday loan debts and providing only the remaining funds to the consumer. That, however, was the only abusiveness claim among the ten enforcement actions of the Mulvaney era (although the Mulvaney-led CFPB did continue to litigate abusiveness claims filed under Cordray).
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The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD Act) requires the CFPB to prepare a biennial report to Congress regarding the consumer credit card market. On August 27th, the CFPB issued its fourth such report (previous reports were issued in 2013, 2015 and 2017) which describes the CFPB’s findings regarding, among other things, the…

While banks must be prudent and follow applicable regulations, the latest guidelines from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency may allow banks to justify a nuanced asset dissipation or depletion underwriting program, so long as it is backed by analysis.

On July 23, 2019, the OCC issued a bulletin reminding its regulated institutions to use safe and sound banking practices when underwriting a residential mortgage loan based on the applicant’s assets. While the bulletin does not provide much satisfaction for those seeking safe harbors or any specific guidance, it provides certain hints at what the OCC will look for in an examination.

Asset dissipation underwriting (or asset amortization or depletion underwriting) is a way for mortgage lenders to calculate a stream of funds derived from an applicant’s assets that could be available for loan payments, in addition to income (if any) received from employment or other sources. The bulletin notes that while the OCC’s regulated institutions have prudently administered asset depletion models for many years, examiners have seen an uptick that is unsupported by credit risk management practices and insufficiently compliant with existing regulations and guidelines.

One such existing regulation, which the bulletin mentions in a footnote, is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Ability to Repay/Qualified Mortgage (QM) Rule, applicable to most closed-end residential mortgage loans. That Rule allows a mortgage lender to consider an applicant’s current or reasonably expected assets in determining his/her ability to repay a mortgage loan, so long as the lender verifies the assets through financial institution statements or other reliable documents. Still, mortgage lenders must – when making QMs or non-QMs – calculate a debt-to-income ratio (DTI). (Non-QM lenders could also use a residual income figure.) Accordingly, if lenders are relying on an applicant’s assets, the lenders must come up with a monthly amount available for mortgage payments. However, unlike the Rule’s Appendix Q, which regulates how lenders may consider various types of income when making general QMs, neither the Rule nor Appendix Q specifies any requirements for unacceptable types of assets, discounts of asset values based on liquidity, amortization periods, or rate-of-return estimates.

While the OCC bulletin does not directly fill in any of those blanks, it does provide some clues. …
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On July 25th, the CFPB announced plans to allow the temporary Qualified Mortgage (QM) status given to loans eligible for purchase by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac (the GSEs) to expire. However, the agency stated it could allow a short extension past the January 10, 2021 expiration date, and is in any case soliciting public comments on the general QM definition, including its income and debt documentation requirements.

When the CFPB issued its Ability-to-Repay/QM Rule in response to the Dodd-Frank Act, it sought to provide some bright-line tests for loans deemed generally safe for residential mortgage borrowers. The CFPB decided that a debt-to-income ratio (DTI) that does not exceed 43% was an appropriate proxy, along with several other factors. While the CFPB believed that many consumers can afford a DTI above 43%, those consumers should be served by the non-QM market, where lenders must individually evaluate the consumers’ compensating factors. However, the CFPB recognized that it may take some time, post-crisis, for a non-QM market to develop, even for credit-worthy borrowers. Accordingly, the CFPB created a category of loans that would temporarily enjoy QM status – loans that meet the GSEs’ underwriting criteria (plus a few other requirements). The CFPB set the expiration date for the temporary QM category at five years (unless the GSEs were to emerge from conservatorship prior to that).

Now, several years later, the CFPB has found that the temporary GSE QM “patch” represents a “large and persistent” share of originations, and likely was the reason the Rule did not result in decreased access to credit for those with DTIs over 43%. …
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The U.S. House of Representatives is considering a bill to address the underwriting difficulties and resulting lack of access to mortgage credit for self-employed borrowers and others with nontraditional income sources.

Representatives Bill Foster (D-IL) and Tom Emmer (R-MN) introduced H.R. 2445, a House companion to the Senate bill recently re-introduced by Senators Mike…

Just two months after financial institutions submitted their so-called “new” data as required under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is considering whether to eliminate or revise the requirement to collect and report those new data elements, and whether to change the requirements to report certain business- or commercial-purpose transactions.

Specifically, the CFPB issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) on May 8, 2019, asking the public for input on those changes. (An agency may issue an ANPR to gather information needed to formulate a proposed rule.) The ANPR fulfills part of the promise announced by former CFPB acting director Mick Mulvaney last year to reconsider nearly all aspects of HMDA reporting, including not just the new data points, but also newly-covered institutions and transactions.

While HMDA (as amended by the Dodd Frank Act) requires certain institutions to collect and report a significant list of data elements regarding the institutions’ home lending activities, the CFPB revised and added to that list during a comprehensive 2015 HMDA rulemaking.…
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Many of Mayer Brown’s Consumer Financial Services partners will be featured at the upcoming Legal Issues and Regulatory Compliance Conference in New Orleans, sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

On Sunday, May 5, Kris Kully will help guide attendees through the basics of the Truth in Lending Act, as part of the conference’s Certified Mortgage…

Earlier this week, the Bureau released the Winter 2019 edition of Supervisory Highlights.  This marks the first edition issued under the CFPB’s new Director, Kathy Kraninger, who was confirmed to a five-year term in December.  The report describes observations from examinations that were generally completed between June and November 2018 and summarizes recent publicly-released enforcement actions and guidance.

Like the sole edition of Supervisory Highlights issued under Acting Director Mick Mulvaney’s tenure, this edition emphasizes that “it is important to keep in mind that institutions are subject only to the requirements of relevant laws and regulations,” and that the purpose of disseminating Supervisory Highlights is to “help institutions better understand” how the Bureau examines them for compliance—statements that signal a shift in how the Bureau approaches its supervisory role.…
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Congress amended the Truth in Lending Act in May 2018 by directing the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to prescribe ability-to-repay regulations with respect to Property Assessed Clean Energy (“PACE”) financing. PACE financing helps homeowners cover the costs of home improvements, which financing results in a tax assessment on the consumer’s property. Ability-to-repay regulations, which TILA…

CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger has filed her first contested lawsuit as CFPB Director.  Somewhat surprisingly, the lawsuit seeks to enforce a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) issued by the CFPB in June 2017—under former Director Richard Cordray—to a debt collection law firm.  The petition to enforce the CID makes clear that the respondent law firm made a “final, partial, redacted production” in response to the CID in September 2017.  Clearly, therefore, this matter was pending at the CFPB throughout the year-long tenure of Mick Mulvaney, during which the agency took no action to enforce the CID. It is dangerous to read too much into this action, but it does suggest that Kraninger may take a more aggressive enforcement posture than Mulvaney, who was criticized for the sharp drop in the number of enforcement actions under his watch.

The CID at issue is a typically broad CFPB CID from that era. It contains 21 interrogatories with dozens of sub-parts, seven requests for written reports, 15 requests for documents, and, unusually, four request for “tangible things,” in this case phone recordings and associated metadata. Read as a whole, the CID seeks information regarding virtually every aspect of the respondent’s debt collection business over a period of three-and-a-half years. The CID’s Notification of Purpose is equally broad and limitless,…
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