With the presidential election only a month away, Congress and the regulatory agencies have not made any major new rulings or proposed new rules. Still, there have been minor changes made by the Federal Agencies which required changes to documents - and some changes to improve our documents. These changes went into effect on September 25.
As summer starts to fade, the compliance landscape for August slowed as Congress entered recess and regulators slowed new rules. However, August was filled with several document updates, and Docutech unveiled an exciting new disclosure matrix.
Follow our compliance blog to remain up to date on regulatory changes within the industry.
eNote adoption is a critical step along the pathway to fully digital lending, and it’s something lenders across the industry have been working very hard to achieve.
eNotes have been finally enjoying significant adoption across the industry, 20 years after the federal eSign legislation opened the door to digital lending.
New Mandate Use Date: March 1, 2021
It has been four years since the Federal National Mortgage Association (“FNMA”) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (“FHLMC”; collectively “the GSEs”) unveiled a completely revised version of their “Uniform Residential Loan Application” (FNMA Form 1003/FHLMC Form 65) and, after many postponements and revisions, the new version took effect Saturday (August 1, 2020) for select participants during a “Limited Production Period” (“LPP”). The road to production for this form has been long and tedious, but hopefully the destination will have been worth the journey.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to change the regulatory and compliance landscape for mortgage lenders. Many states continue to pass laws requiring lenders to offer forbearance options instead of defaulting on loans, and others are trying to facilitate more remote-based options. This has required many document changes, all of which are automatically incorporated into ConformX, ensuring that your documents are compliant with state, federal and investor requirements.
As the financial industry gets closer to its goal of embracing full digital lending, it’s important that lenders not lose sight of the fact that many customers still want to interact with a real person when they have questions or need assistance, perhaps even more so in today’s environment. This is especially true in real estate and home finance where the transactions are complex and fewer consumers have enough experience and knowledge to feel comfortable navigating the ins and outs of the mortgage process alone.
While Docutech™ has been on the leading edge of the digital revolution for many years, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the industry’s acceptance of eClosings in ways no one could have anticipated. Coronavirus has driven the mortgage industry to expedite plans to roll out digital mortgages. Every step of the loan process has had to adapt to a remote workforce and borrowers preferring to conduct business digitally.
At the very end of June, the Supreme Court ruled that the CFPB’s single-director structure was unconstitutional. The Court also ruled that the Bureau as an entity was constitutional and could continue operating. In the short term, we don’t expect major changes, but the ruling does permit the President to remove the CFPB’s director “at will,” rather than “for cause.” We’re still processing the potential impact of the ruling, and we will provide more details if needed.
How does an intuitive eClosing process and a powerful LOS work together to deliver a true end-to-end digital mortgage experience? We sat down with David Wieczorek – Group Product Manager for LendingQB at MeridianLink, a leading provider of SaaS loan origination technology solutions, to get his perspective on the importance of providing lenders and their customers with a true digital mortgage experience.
