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.
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 we enter the summer months, lenders are facing a complicated lending and regulatory environment. Despite states beginning to reopen, many borrowers and lending staff are choosing to maintain social distancing. As a result, more states are permitting Remote Online Notarizations (RON) in the absence of Federal guidelines.
Our compliance team is hard at work monitoring any developments at the federal and state level to provide you with the information and tools necessary to continue operations amid COVID-19. We are seeing updates at both the state and national level to accommodate difficulties in this time and are working continuously to ensure our guidance reflects the latest news.
March was a tumultuous month for all of us, as everyone across industries and even continents attempted to establish a new normal amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
February brought the first major regulatory changes with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rolling out new the ARM regulations alluded to late last year. The GSEs announced plans for the gradual elimination (and replacement) of their ARM programs, which use LIBOR as the index for setting the adjustable interest rate. We have been working quickly to update documents but expect to see more changes and will alert you as more information becomes available.
This month’s changes were geared mainly toward document updates. In this post, you’ll find links to some of the work our experts were engaged in last month to keep our clients up to date and fully compliant. We bring you all the news in this month’s compliance update.
How can mortgage lenders best navigate the fine line between reducing the risk of lending to highly leveraged borrowers and making homeownership available to more people? Over the decades, the pendulum has swung between tight lending standards that are safer (but more restrictive) and looser standards intended to help first-time homebuyers, lower income borrowers, or those with student loan debt.
