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Top Story Lending Related

01/08/2024

CFPB: Borrowers face challenges in resumption of student loan payments

The CFPB on Friday announced its publication of Issue Spotlight: Federal Student Loan Return to Repayment, on the CFPB’s oversight of student loan servicing practices in the early months of the resumption of federal student loan repayments after over three years of a payment pause due to the COVID-19 emergency.

  • Long hold times and abandoned calls: The report finds that borrowers are frequently forced to wait on hold for more than an hour when calling their servicer, and many give up without ever receiving assistance. Many servicers were able to boost their financial performance by dramatically reducing staffing during the pandemic. However, servicers have not met the foreseeable borrower demand for help with their loans.
  • Significant delays in processing income-driven repayment plan applications: Millions of income-driven repayment plan applications were submitted between August and October 2023. As of late October, servicers reported more than 1.25 million pending income-driven repayment plan applications – with more than 450,000 of those applications pending for more than 30 days with no resolution. Processing times vary across servicers, with some servicers taking five times longer than others to process applications.
  • Inaccurate and untimely billing statements: Borrowers are receiving faulty and confusing bills from servicers. Errors include listing premature due dates before the end of the payment pause, inflating monthly payment amounts due to the servicer using outdated poverty guidelines, or using the incorrect income when calculating a borrower’s new income-driven repayment plan payment. These mistakes can cause significant borrower confusion, and can further strain the servicers’ resources by forcing borrowers to contact their servicer to resolve the errors.

01/05/2024

FTC and Connecticut sue Manchester Nissan dealership

The Federal Trade Commission has announced it has joined the State of Connecticut in filing a complaint against auto dealer Chase Nissan LLC d/b/a Manchester City Nissan, its owner, and key employees, for systematically deceiving consumers about the price of certified used cars, add-ons, and government fees.

The complaint alleges that the dealership, in addition to deceiving consumers, regularly charges them junk fees for certification, add-on products, and inflated government charges without the consumers’ consent, sometimes costing them thousands of dollars in unwanted and unauthorized charges.

Connecticut also alleges that all these practices are deceptive or unfair under Connecticut law.

01/05/2024

FDIC releases recent CRA evaluation ratings

The FDIC has released a list of 68 banks whose evaluations of compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act were recently made public. We congratulate four banks on the list whose evaluations were rated Outstanding:

First Trust and Savings Bank, Coralville, Iowa, received a "Needs to Improve" rating. The remaining 63 banks' evaluations were rated Satisfactory.

01/05/2024

Notice: The HMDA filing period for 2023 data has begun

The CFPB emailed a reminder yesterday that it opened the filing period for HMDA data collected in 2023 on January 1, 2024. Submissions will be considered timely if received on or before Friday, March 1, 2024.

01/03/2024

OCC releases December CRA evaluation ratings

The OCC has released CRA evaluations for 25 OCC-supervised institutions whose evaluations became public in December 2023.

Of the evaluations listed, 18 are rated satisfactory, and the following seven are rated outstanding:

01/02/2024

FDIC November enforcement actions

The FDIC has released a list of enforcement actions it took in November 2023.

  • Horicon Bank, Horicon, Wisconsin, was assessed a $23,000 civil money penalty for engaging in a pattern or practice of violations of the Flood Disaster Protect Act and FDIC regulations.
  • Removal and Prohibition Orders were issued against:
    • Sheree Leanne Carter, formerly a teller at Rockland Trust Company, Rockland, Massachusetts, after the FDIC found, and Carter neither admitted nor denied that over a span of 16 years she stole funds from the bank by taking cash from her teller drawer and cash intended for the bank's ATMs. manipulated the bank's systems and records to create fictitious transactions before audits and to cancel those transactions after the audits were completed, to avoid detection and conceal her embezzlement for personal gain of approximately $430,000.
    • Lladira Hernandez, formerly a client success representative at Central Valley Community Bank, Fresco, California, after the FDIC determined, and Hernandez neither admitted nor denied that, between May and August 2022, she initiated unauthorized ACH debits from four separate customers; and also fraudulently created an online banking profile for a customer, linked her own accounts to it and, after
      resigning from the bank, initiated unauthorized transfers.
    • William J. Burnell, formerly the chief credit officer of NBC Bank, New Orleans, Louisiana, after the FDIC determined, and he neither admitted nor denied, that during 2015 and 2016 he approved loans to borrowers that he knew were not creditworthy. An earlier Order for Assessment of a Civil Money Penalty against him was terminated.
  • Cease and Desist Consent Orders were issued to Peoples Bank, Munster, Indiana; Commenity Servicing, LLC, Columbus, Ohio; First Fed Bank, Port Angeles, Washington; Liberty Bank, Inc., Salt Lake City, Utah, and; Brighton Bank, Brighton, Tennessee.

12/28/2023

Proposed Call Report and FFIEC 002 report changes

The OCC, Federal Reserve, and FDIC yesterday published [88 FR 89489] a joint notice and request for comment on proposed revisions to the reporting forms and instructions for the Call Reports and the FFIEC 002 relating to the reporting on (1) loans to nondepository financial institutions and other loans, (2) guaranteed structured financial products, and (3) proposed long–term debt requirements. The proposed revisions to the FFIEC 002 report form and instructions relate to the reporting on the loans to nondepository financial institutions and other loans. These proposed changes apply to all three versions of the Call Report (FFIEC 031, FFIEC 041, and FFIEC 051) and to the Report of Assets and Liabilities of U.S. Branches and Agencies of Foreign Banks (FFIEC 002), as applicable.

In addition, the agencies are requesting comment on a proposal to adopt ongoing standards for electronic signatures to comply with the Call Report signature and attestation requirement.

These proposed changes would be effective as of the June 30, 2024, report date, except for those related to the proposed long–term debt requirements, which would take effect the same quarter as the effective date of any final rule on such requirements.

Redlined copies of the FFIEC 031, FFIEC 041, and FFIEC 051 Call Report forms showing the proposed changes and the related draft reporting instructions will be available on the FFIEC’s webpages for these reports, which can be accessed from the FFIEC’s Reporting Forms webpage.

Comments must be submitted by February 26, 2024.

12/27/2023

OCC revises its small and intermediate small CRA asset thresholds

On Tuesday, the OCC issued Bulletin 2023-40 announcing revisions to the asset-size threshold amounts used to define “small bank or savings association” and “intermediate small bank or savings association” under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) regulations. The thresholds—which apply to any national bank, federal savings association, or state savings association (collectively, bank)—become effective January 1, 2024. This bulletin adjusts the threshold amounts based on the annual percentage change in a measure of the Consumer Price Index.

The threshold amounts are the same as those announced last week by the FDIC and Federal Reserve System—Beginning January 1, 2024, a bank that, as of December 31 of either of the prior two calendar years, had assets of less than $1.564 billion is a “small bank or savings association.” A “small bank or savings association” with assets of at least $391 million as of December 31 of both of the prior two calendar years and less than $1.564 billion as of December 31 of either of the prior two calendar years is an “intermediate small bank or savings association.”

12/26/2023

House prices edge higher

According to the December 2023 FHFA House Price Index for December, U.S. house prices rose in October, up 0.3 percent from September, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) seasonally adjusted monthly House Price Index (HPI). House prices rose 6.3 percent from October 2022 to October 2023. The previously reported 0.6 percent price increase in September was revised to a 0.7 percent increase.

12/26/2023

CFPB and DOJ sue Texas-based developer/lender

The CFPB has announced it has joined the Department of Justice in suing Colony Ridge, a Texas-based developer and lender, for operating an illegal land sales scheme and targeting tens of thousands of Hispanic borrowers with false statements and predatory loans. The lawsuit filed in federal district court alleges Colony Ridge sells unsuspecting families flood-prone land without water, sewer, or electrical infrastructure, and that the company sets borrowers up to fail with loans they cannot afford. Roughly 1-in-4 Colony Ridge loans ends in foreclosure, after which the company repurchases the properties and sells them to new borrowers. The CFPB and Justice Department are seeking redress for borrowers harmed by Colony Ridge and an immediate end to its illegal practices. This is the CFPB’s first federal court lawsuit charging a defendant with violations of the Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act.

The lawsuit names as defendants three Texas-based Colony Ridge affiliate companies, as well as Loan Originator Services, a nonbank mortgage company licensed to originate loans in Texas. Colony Ridge has developed more than 40,000 lots spread across an unincorporated area of Liberty County, Texas, approximately 30 miles northeast of Houston. Colony Ridge markets these subdivisions using the names “Terrenos Houston” and “Terrenos Santa Fe.”

Colony Ridge targets Spanish-speaking borrowers: it advertises almost exclusively in Spanish, often in TikTok or other social media posts featuring, for example, national flags and regional music from Latin America. In these advertisements, Colony Ridge promises consumers the dream of home ownership with its own seller financing: an easy-to-obtain loan product that requires no credit check and only a small deposit.

The complaint alleges that Colony Ridge has lured tens of thousands of Hispanic consumers into their predatory loan products. Foreclosure and property deed records from September 2019 through September 2022 show that Colony Ridge initiated foreclosures on at least 30% of seller-financed lots within just three years of the purchase date, with most loan failures occurring even sooner. Records also confirm that Colony Ridge accounted for more than 92% of all foreclosures recorded in Liberty County between 2017 and 2022.

The complaint seeks to stop Colony Ridge’s alleged unlawful conduct, provide redress for affected consumers, and impose a civil penalty payable to the CFPB victims relief fund. If the defendants are found liable, the amount of any restitution will be determined in the litigation in federal court.

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