As we now start to close some loans, I have a question. For our smaller, in house loans, the lender is the the individual conducting the closing. We do use a title attorney to pull a title exam and to issue title insurance, but they would not be conducting the closing. On page 5 of the CD, under Settlement Agent, do I leave this blank or does the bank name, lender, etc. need to be listed here? Just wondering how everyone is doing this if they are not using a settlement agent. Or is my bank the lone wolf in not using a closing attorney for some transactions? I will say this, our loan origination system will not allow us to proceed or print a CD without a settlement agent listed so if a lender and settlement agent are to be considered two separate parties, then I need to submit a change request to our provider possibly.

I've looked in the regulation and the preamble and it appears to segregate the creditor/lender and the settlement agent as two separate entities. Case in point, section 1026.38(r)-item 1 in the Commentary mentions the creditor and settlement agent as two separate parties and states if no such person is participating in the transaction to leave it blank. See below.

Specifically under 1026.38(r) Contact information.
1. Each person to be identified. Form H-25 of appendix H to this part includes the contact information required to be disclosed under § 1026.38(r) generally in a five-column tabular format (i.e., there are columns from left to right that disclose the contact information for the creditor, mortgage broker, consumer’s real estate broker, seller’s real estate broker, and settlement agent). Columns are left blank where no such person is participating in the transaction.

I believe we have a consensus around here that double listing is redundant. I am not listing us when we close the loan.

Our system requires the settlement agent to not be empty. So when we close small loans in-house, we do put in our bank's name as the settlement agent. It is redundant but that is what we do at our bank.

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Just my opinion and not legal advice.

We also had the same question. When submitting the question to the CFPB, we were told that if we were truly performing the settlement services we would list our institution information as we are both the lender and settlement service provider.

It is not crystal clear. E-mail the CFPB and see what they have to say. IMHO - either way, what is the risk?

Risk is minimal. With the origination software issues that we continue to have, before I sent a potential change request to the vendor, I just wanted to get some different opinions on how it was being treated elsewhere based on interpretation. As states, it is not very clear so just wanted some insight.

The only insight that counts on issues like this are those of the CFPB

True. Very true.