June Compliance Roundup

Not a great deal of regulatory activity in the month of June, as spring gave way to summer and many state houses sent their lawmakers on break. Still, there were a number of important changes that our compliance experts caught, and we summarize them for you below.

Remember that you will always be up to date, up to the minute, by following the posts in our compliance blog.

Government Compliance News

Just a couple of states enacted changes in June, and we capture them both for you below. In addition, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac finalized their work on retiring an adjustable-rate mortgage product and the Federal Government surprised everyone with a new federal holiday. The details and links to more information are below.

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. The Constant Maturity Treasury ARM products have been retired. Both GSEs made their announcements last month. No CMT ARMS will be purchased with application dates after June 30, 2021. First American Docutech has also created custom programs in ConformX that will continue to utilize the CMT ARM index that can be mapped as desired by clients under the CSTM Custom Programs. Learn more.

Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Department of Consumer Credit has, as they are required to do every year, increased the maximum late charge for delinquent payments on a consumer loan or revolving loan account as promulgated in the state’s statutes. This maximum amount has increased from $26.50 to $27. We will be updating our ConformX Late Fee Defaults to reflect these changes. Learn more.

U.S. Government. On June 17, 2021 President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act which made June 19^th a federal holiday. This new law is effective immediately and has impacted the definition of “business day” under TILA and Regulation Z. ConformX uses a system calendar to apply business day rules where applicable. We have added June 19, 2021 as a holiday to this system calendar. Learn more. 

Virginia. Gov. Ralph Northam (D) of Virginia has approved VA H.B. 1882 (2021), which impacts several rules regarding deeds of trust. The law updated the model form for subordinate language to include a reference to the previous loan interest rate. The documents impacted by this change are VA Deed of Trust (Cx354) and FHA VA Deed of Trust (Cx19404). Learn more.

Document Changes
Our compliance team delivered just a few significant document updates in June. The changes have been summarized below with links to the full descriptions of the updates.

• Freddie Mac has updated its power of attorney requirements to limit the pre-close borrower discussions to only cash-out refinances. To accomplish this change, we are changing the configuration of our FHLMC copy of Cx23852 (Explanation of Loan Terms [POA]) to only print for cash-out refinance loans. In addition, FHLMC also specified some terms of the mortgage that are required to be discussed during these pre-closing borrower discussions, which we will be including on Cx23852. Learn more.
• As the result of a recent document audit, we are updating our version of Indiana State Form 51781 (Cx14885 IN Property Tax Benefits), to align with the updated model form that is available on the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance site. Learn more.
• Changes Virginia’s governor Ralph Northam (D) signed into law last month amended various parts of Virginia’s Code regarding electronic recordings and notarizations, such as requiring an indication within a notarial certificate as to whether the notarization was done in person or via Remote Online Notarization (RON). Consequently, a number of state forms and multi-state documents were updated. Learn more.

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