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The Housing and Urban Development Department has kicked off Fair Housing Month 2016 with the launch of a new national media campaign that helps the public envision what communities with shared opportunity for all might look like. The new campaign is designed to further educate the public about their housing rights and the ideals behind HUD’s new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) initiative. The campaign, which was developed in partnership with the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), will include print public service announcements in various languages, television in English and Spanish, online videos, and social media outreach. The campaign will run throughout 2016, and comes as the nation celebrates the 48th anniversary Fair Housing Act.

The Federal Reserve Board has finalized a rule that will expand the range of assets large banking organizations may use to satisfy regulatory liquidity coverage ratio ("LCR") requirements designed to ensure that these banking organizations have the capacity to meet their liquidity needs during a period of financial stress. The final rule allows investment-grade, U.S. general obligation state and municipal securities to be counted as high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) up to certain levels if they meet the same liquidity criteria that currently apply to corporate debt securities. The limits on the amount of a state's or municipality's securities that could qualify are based on the liquidity characteristics of the securities. The final rule, which will be effective on July 1, 2016, applies only to institutions supervised by the Federal Reserve and subject to the LCR requirement:

• Bank holding companies, certain savings and loan holding companies, and state member banks with $250 billion or more in total consolidated assets or $10 billion or more in on-balance sheet foreign exposure;
• state member banks with $10 billion or more in total consolidated assets that are subsidiaries of the above entities;
• nonbank financial companies designated by the Financial Stability Oversight Council for Board supervision, to which the Board has applied the LCR requirement by separate rule or order; and
• bank holding companies and certain savings and loan holding companies with $50 billion or more in total consolidated assets, to which a less stringent LCR applies.

Community banks are not subject to the LCR requirement.
Update: Published 4/11/16, 81 FR 21223

In April 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suspended for one year (see Regulation Z § 1026.58(g)) the § 1026.58(c) requirement for submissions of credit card agreements to the Bureau for posting on the Bureau's website. The next submission is due by May 2, 2016. The CFPB has now issued guidance for credit card issuers with simplified instructions for making the required submissions.

The March 2016 issue of the Senior Credit Officer Opinion Survey (SCOOS) on dealer financing terms has been released by the Federal Reserve Board. The quarterly survey provides information about the availability and terms of credit in securities financing and over-the counter (OTC) derivatives markets. The SCOOS is modeled after the long-established Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices, which provides qualitative information about changes in supply and demand for loans to households and businesses at commercial banks.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has posted updates to three of its Small Entity Compliance Guides and three charts for implementation of Dodd-Frank Act Title XIV mortgage lending rules, to reflect the Bureau's recent amendments to expand eligibility for the special provisions allowing certain small creditors to issue balloon-payment qualified mortgages and balloon-payment high cost mortgages, and exempting them from the escrow requirement for higher-priced mortgage loans. The updates, all of which can be found on the Bureau's Title XIV Implementation Page, include:

• Compliance Guide for ATR/QM
• Compliance Guide for HOEPA
• Compliance Guide for the HPML Escrow Rule
• Transaction Coverage and Exemption Chart
• Small Creditor QM Flowchart
• ATR/QM Comparison Chart

The OCC has released its Mortgage Metrics Report for the Fourth Quarter of 2015. The report indicates 94.1 percent of mortgages included in the report were current and performing at the end of the quarter, compared with 93.9 percent a quarter earlier. The report also showed that foreclosure activity has declined steadily since the end of 2013, decreasing 15.9 percent from the end of 2014. Reporting servicers initiated 63,387 new foreclosures during the fourth quarter of 2015, compared with 75,395 a year earlier. The mortgages included in the report comprise 41 percent of all residential mortgages outstanding in the United States or approximately 21.5 million loans totaling $3.7 trillion in principal balances.

Two workshops for directors of national community banks and federal savings associations supervised by the OCC will be held in Springfield, Illinois, on May 3-4. The Risk Governance workshop on May 3 combines lectures, discussion, and exercises to provide practical information for directors to effectively measure and manage risks. The workshop also focuses on the OCC's approach to risk-based supervision and major risks in the financial industry. The Compliance Risk workshop on May 4 combines lectures, discussion, and exercises on the critical elements of an effective compliance risk management program. The workshop also focuses on major compliance risks and critical regulations. Topics of discussion include the Bank Secrecy Act, Community Reinvestment Act, and the Truth-in-Lending (TILA) and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act of 1974 (RESPA) Integrated Disclosures Rule, also known as TRID.

A complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission and the Illinois Attorney General has resulted in a federal court issuing a temporary restraining order (TRO) halting a Chicago-area operation that allegedly threatened and intimidated consumers to collect phantom payday loan “debts” they did not owe, or did not owe to the defendants. The defendants also allegedly illegally provided portfolios of fake debt to other debt collectors. This is the Commission's first case alleging that practice. The case against six companies and three individuals who used names such as Stark Law, Stark Recovery, and Capital Harris Miller & Associates is part of Operation Collection Protection, an ongoing federal-state-local crackdown on collectors that use deceptive and abusive collection practices.

The CFPB has acted to halt a student loan debt relief scam that illegally tricked borrowers into paying fees for federal loan benefits and misrepresented to consumers that it was affiliated with the Department of Education. The CFPB has ordered the student debt relief company, Student Aid Institute, Inc., and its chief executive officer, Steven Lamont, to pay a penalty, halt debt relief services, and stop charging affected customers. The CFPB also permanently barred the company and Lamont from the debt relief industry.

The Bureau has announced the release of its March consumer complaint snapshot, which focuses on complaints related to debt collection. The report shows that the most common debt collection complaint involves attempts to collect on a debt the consumer reported was not owed. This month’s snapshot also highlights trends seen in complaints from consumers in Florida. The Bureau’s fifth annual Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) report was also posted.