Fed ends actions against loan servicers, penalizing five

The Federal Reserve Board on Friday announced the termination of enforcement actions related to residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing issued in 2011 and 2012 against 10 banking organizations. The Board also announced civil money penalties totaling $35.1 million against five of these 10 organizations that had not yet been fined for their mortgage servicing deficiencies related to those enforcement actions. With the penalties announced today, the Board has now assessed penalties totaling approximately $1.1 billion against all Federal Reserve supervised firms under mortgage servicing enforcement actions.

The 10 banking organizations are: Ally Financial Inc.; Bank of America Corporation; CIT Group, Inc. (as successor to IMB HoldCo LLC); The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.; HSBC North America Holdings, Inc.; JPMorgan Chase & Co.; Morgan Stanley; The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.; SunTrust Banks, Inc.; and U.S. Bancorp. The termination of the actions was based on evidence of sustainable improvements in the firms' oversight and mortgage servicing practices.

The civil money penalties announced today are: $14 million against Goldman Sachs; $8 million against Morgan Stanley; $5.2 million against CIT (as successor to IMB); $4.4 million against U.S. Bancorp; and $3.5 million against PNC.

Also on Friday, the Board announced the termination by the Board and other federal financial regulatory agencies of joint enforcement actions issued in 2011 against Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS), which was succeeded by ServiceLink Holdings, LLC, and against MERSCORP Holdings, Inc., formerly known as MERSCORP, Inc. (MERS). These enforcement actions addressed deficiencies in the foreclosure-related services LPS and MERS each provided to entities regulated by the agencies. The termination of the actions was based on evidence of sustainable improvements in the foreclosure-related practices of LPS and MERS.