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Monitor Finds Mortgage Lenders Still Falling Short of Settlement’s Terms

June 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The nation’s five biggest mortgage lenders have largely satisfied their financial obligations under last year’s $25 billion settlement over mortgage abuses, helping hundreds of thousands of families keep their homes. But four of the five have yet to meet their commitment to end the maze of frustrations that borrowers must navigate to modify their loans, according to a report on Wednesday by the settlement’s independent monitor.

The most common failure involved a requirement that borrowers be notified in a timely manner of any documents missing from their applications. Banks also failed to meet strict timelines for approving applications. The settlement requires that borrowers be notified of missing documents within five days and given 30 days to supply the missing paperwork and that decisions be rendered at most 30 days after an application is completed.

“I think what you see is there’s still a communication problem,” said Joseph A. Smith Jr., the monitor. “If there’s a unifying feature, it’s that the servicers who failed these things are not yet communicating effectively.”

The mortgage settlement came after the housing crash led to a wave of foreclosures across the country and after widespread improprieties in mortgage lending and in the foreclosure process were uncovered.

The banks report their own performance on 29 loan servicing criteria, and their findings are then tested in a random sampling by outside consultants overseen by the monitor.

Citibank failed three metrics, two of which involve notifying borrowers of missing documents in a timely fashion and one that requires that a letter containing accurate information be sent to a homeowner before foreclosure.

Bank of America failed two metrics, one regarding missing documents and the other regarding the pre-foreclosure letter. Wells Fargo also flunked on the missing documents.

JPMorgan Chase failed to adhere to the prescribed timeline for reviewing loan modification requests and notifying customers of its decision. It also failed to remove home insurance policies, known as forced-place insurance, within two weeks of a homeowner’s submitting proof that he or she had insurance.

The fifth lender, ResCap, formerly the mortgage subsidiary of Ally Financial, whose mortgage servicing is now handled by other companies, was not found to have failed on any of the metrics.

The banks are required to submit a corrective action plan and compensate affected borrowers. Chase, for example, has already refunded insurance premiums charged to 2,000 borrowers. “We quickly fixed the issue,” said Amy Bonitatibus, a spokeswoman for Chase, adding that the timeline problem had been remedied as well.

Wells Fargo said that its internal reviews showed that it had already fixed its problem. Citi said it had fixed one of its issues and was working on the other two.

Dan Frahm, a spokesman for Bank of America, which is responsible for about 60 percent of the total financial obligation under the settlement, said, “While neither area of noncompliance resulted in inaccurate foreclosures or improper loan modification denials, we took immediate action and resolved one area and will soon return to compliance in the other.”

The servicers also submitted to the monitor almost 60,000 complaints received from elected officials on behalf of their constituents. The most common complaints, the monitor’s report said, were related to the bank’s obligation to provide a single point of contact to borrowers seeking modification of their loans. There were also complaints about “dual tracking,” in which the foreclosure process is begun before a borrower’s request for a loan modification is resolved.

Despite the volume of complaints, none of the banks failed the requirement to provide a single point of contact, leading Mr. Smith to conclude that he needed to add more criteria in that area. He said at least three new metrics measuring the efficacy of the single point of contact would be added.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to a lender that was not found to have failed on any of the metrics. It is ResCap, the mortgage subsidiary of Ally Financial, not Ally Financial itself.

 

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/economy/monitor-finds-lenders-failing-terms-of-settlement.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Monitor Finds Lenders Failing Terms of Settlement

June 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The nation’s five biggest mortgage lenders have likely already satisfied their financial obligations under last year’s $25 billion settlement over mortgage abuses, helping hundreds of thousands of families keep their homes. But four of the five have yet to meet the settlement’s second goal: ending the maze of frustrations that borrowers must navigate in order to modify their loans, according to a report Wednesday by the settlement’s independent monitor.

Four of the banks failed to meet at least one of the 29 loan-servicing criteria they agreed to meet, like a requirement that borrowers be notified of any documents missing from their applications in a timely manner. The settlement requires that borrowers be notified within five days and given 30 days to supply the missing paperwork.

“I think what you see is there’s still a communication problem,” said Joseph A. Smith Jr., the monitor. “If there’s a unifying feature, it’s that the servicers who failed these things are not yet communicating effectively.” The banks report their own performance on the 29 criteria, and their findings are then tested in a random sampling by outside groups.

Citibank failed three metrics, two of which involve notifying borrowers of missing documents in a timely fashion and one that requires a letter containing accurate information be sent to a homeowner before foreclosure.

Bank of America failed two metrics, one regarding missing documents and the other regarding the pre-foreclosure letter. Wells Fargo also flunked on the missing documents.

JPMorgan Chase failed to adhere to the prescribed timeline for reviewing loan modification requests and notifying customers of its decision. It also failed to remove home insurance policies, known as forced-place insurance, within two weeks of a homeowner’s submitting proof that he or she had insurance.

The fifth lender, Ally Financial, whose mortgage servicing is now handled by other companies, was not found to have failed on any of the metrics.

was not found to have failed on any of the metrics.

The banks are required to submit a corrective action plan and compensate affected borrowers. Chase, for example, has already refunded insurance premiums charged to 2,000 borrowers. “We quickly fixed the issue,” said Amy Bonitatibus, a spokeswoman for Chase, adding that the timeline problem had been remedied as well.

Wells Fargo said that its internal reviews showed that it had already fixed its problem. Citi said it had already fixed one of its issues and was working on the other two.

Dan Frahm, a spokesman for Bank of America, which is responsible for about 60 percent of the total financial obligation under the settlement, said, “While neither area of noncompliance resulted in inaccurate foreclosures or improper loan modification denials, we took immediate action and resolved one area and will soon return to compliance in the other.”

The servicers also submitted to the monitor almost 60,000 complaints received from elected officials on behalf of their constituents. The most common complaints, the monitor’s report said, were related to the bank’s obligation to provide a single point of contact to borrowers seeking modification of their loans. There were also complaints about “dual tracking,” in which the foreclosure process is begun before a borrower’s request for a loan modification is resolved.

Despite the volume of complaints, none of the banks failed the requirement to provide a single point of contact, leading Mr. Smith to conclude that he needed to add more criteria in that area. He said at least three new metrics would be added.

The settlement came after the housing crash led to a wave of foreclosures across the country, and after widespread improprieties in mortgage lending and in the foreclosure process were uncovered.

Banks are subject to fines of up to $5 million if they do not improve their performance on a failed metric. But they are allowed a certain number of errors, usually 5 percent, before they are considered to have failed. Critics of the settlement point out that in contrast, homeowners seeking help are required to submit virtually perfect paperwork to prevent the loss of their homes.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/economy/monitor-finds-lenders-failing-terms-of-settlement.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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DealBook: In Deal, Bank of America Extends Retreat From Mortgages

January 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Correction Appended

Bank of America bought Countrywide in 2008.Kevork Djansezian/Associated PressBank of America bought Countrywide in 2008.

9:00 p.m. | Updated

Bank of America is continuing a large-scale retreat from its costly expansion into the home mortgage market, a shift that concentrates more power in the hands of its biggest rivals and leaves fewer options for some home buyers.

The bank, which already has sharply scaled back in making mortgages, on Monday sold off about 20 percent of its loan servicing business as part of its agreement to pay the housing finance giant Fannie Mae more than $11 billion to settle a bitter dispute over bad mortgages.

The payment resolves claims that Bank of America made bad mortgages before the financial crisis that home buyers had a hard time repaying, and then sold those troubled mortgages to the government. When borrowers defaulted — sometimes within months of taking out a mortgage — the taxpayer-supported Fannie Mae suffered immense losses.

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Less competition in the mortgage market could hurt consumers, potentially raising the costs of borrowing. The problems at Bank of America have cut down its mortgage ambitions; it accounts for 4 percent of the nation’s mortgage market, a slide from just over 20 percent in 2009, ceding market dominance to Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase.

“This is part of a broader consolidation of banks and that is something that we should all be very, very concerned about,” said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. “Anything that leads to less competition can only be bad for consumers.”

Brian Moynihan, chief of Bank of America.Win McNamee/Getty ImagesBrian Moynihan, chief of Bank of America.

Also Monday, Bank of America and nine other lenders agreed to an $8.5 billion settlement with banking regulators to resolve claims of foreclosure abuses that included flawed paperwork and bungled loan modifications. While the two agreements were separate, they represented one of the biggest single days for government settlements with United States banks, totaling $20.15 billion, and illustrated the extent of the banks’ role in the excesses of the credit boom, from the making of loans to the seizure of homes.

While costly, analysts said, the settlements may reduce legal uncertainties for lenders and spur more banks to compete for home loan business.

In its agreement with Fannie Mae, which the government controls, Bank of America will pay the agency about $3.6 billion to compensate for faulty mortgages and $6.75 billion to buy back mortgages that could have resulted in future losses for the government. The bank also agreed to sell to other firms the right to collect payments on $306 billion worth of home loans.

“Bank of America is sending a clear message that the bank only wants to be the mortgage lender to a select, small group of people,” said Glenn Schorr, an analyst with Nomura.

Bank of America has been battered by a steady stream of losses after its 2008 purchase of Countrywide Financial, the subprime lender that has come to symbolize the reckless lending practices of the real estate bubble. Before Monday, the $4 billion Countrywide acquisition had cost Bank of America more than $40 billion in losses on real estate, legal costs and settlements. Most of the loans covered in the Fannie Mae settlement were issued by Countrywide from 2000 to 2008.

“These agreements are a significant step in resolving our remaining legacy mortgage issues, further streamlining and simplifying the company and reducing expenses over time,” the bank’s chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, said in a statement.

Bank of America said it expected the settlement to depress its fourth-quarter earnings by $2.5 billion. Its shares, which doubled in 2012, on Monday essentially closed flat at just over $12.

While the settlement will resolve all of the lender’s disputes with Fannie Mae, which weighed on the bank, Bank of America still faces billions of dollars in claims from investors and federal prosecutors.

While the mortgage market is consolidating in the hands of a small number of banks, the housing market is showing signs of recovery. The Federal Reserve has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to stimulate the economy, driving down interest rates on 30-year mortgages to 3.34 percent. In the last year, this has helped lift house prices from their lows and prompted a boom in refinancings. At the same time, though, even borrowers with strong credit complain about onerous checks and backlogs in the application process. This suggests banks are still struggling to efficiently follow the higher standards introduced since the financial crisis.

Nearly all mortgages that banks make right now are transferred to the government, which guarantees that they will be repaid.

Most analysts agree that mortgage rates would be lower if banks were competing more vigorously for business. Because the settlements could ease legal uncertainties surrounding mortgage lending, a wider array of banks might be encouraged to lend more, eating into the market share of giants like Wells Fargo.

“Every one of these puts a little more distance between the banks and their subprime problems,” said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry publication.

Wells Fargo made 30 percent of all new mortgages in the first nine months of 2012, far ahead of the second-place JPMorgan, which accounted for 10 percent of the market, according to figures from Inside Mortgage Finance. In 2007, Wells Fargo originated 11 percent of new mortgages.

“The markets are actually more competitive than ever,” said Vickee Adams, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. She says smaller banks are making gains in some of the nation’s biggest urban markets.

Some mortgage analysts said the settlements did not provide the level of legal clarity that the banks crave. “We haven’t done enough listening to the banks,” said Christopher J. Mayer, a professor at Columbia Business School. For instance, he says, the banks need clearer rules on when they have to take back loans they have sold to government housing entities.

But a big problem may be that many banks are too poorly run to compete, a situation that may not quickly change even with greater legal clarity. Bank of America’s servicing operations have struggled for several years.

“It may be that Bank of America decided that it wasn’t good enough at servicing,” said Thomas Lawler, a former chief economist of Fannie Mae and founder of Lawler Economic and Housing Consulting, a housing analysis firm.

The bank is looking to refocus beyond the mortgage business. To that end, Bank of America agreed to offload the servicing rights on two million loans with an outstanding principal of $306 billion. Those rights were scooped up by specialty mortgage servicing firms, including Nationstar Mortgage Holdings and the Newcastle Investment Corporation, which collect payments from borrowers.

Jerry Dubrowski, a spokesman for Bank of America, said, “The strategy is simple: to focus on our core retail customers, to be able to provide an entire array of products and services to them, in which mortgage is an integral product, but not the only product.”

Correction: January 8, 2013

An earlier version of this article omitted one element of the settlement between Bank of America and Fannie Mae, and summaries of the article in some sections of nytimes.com consequently understated the total amount of the two mortgage-related settlements announced Monday. It is more than $20 billion, not $18.5 billion.

Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/bank-of-america-to-pay-10-billion-in-settlement-with-fannie-mae/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Fair Game: Foreclosure Relief? Don’t Hold Your Breath — Fair Game

December 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

So many were skeptical when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced yet another program in April. This one was intended to provide reparations to homeowners who’d been hurt financially by foreclosure abuses at banks.

As the details trickle out, the program looks like more of the disappointing same. “This is just the next program that’s getting people’s hopes up,” said Alys Cohen, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center in Washington. “Not only will it not help people, it could easily harm them.”

The program arose out of a regulatory review in late 2010 of loan servicing practices at the nation’s largest banks. The review followed the robo-signing scandal that erupted after consumer lawyers — not regulators, mind you — identified numerous apparent forgeries and other improper foreclosure documents filed with courts by banks and their representatives.

Last April, the banks agreed to fix problems found in the review and were required to hire independent consultants to audit their practices in 2009 and 2010. JPMorgan Chase engaged Deloitte, while Citibank and U.S. Bancorp hired PricewaterhouseCoopers. Three other banks hired Promontory Financial.

On Nov. 1, letters started going out to more than four million borrowers who were ensnared in the foreclosure process in the two years covered by the program. Those people were told how to request reviews of their cases. The letters also described 22 types of financial harm they might have experienced. Borrowers have until April 30 to request a review.

Obviously, this program has a lot of moving parts. But many of them are flawed, according to Ms. Cohen and other foreclosure experts.

Some of the problems were aired at a Senate subcommittee hearing on Dec. 13. Three Democrats — Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Jack Reed of Rhode Island — expressed doubts about the program to Julie L. Williams, chief counsel at the comptroller’s office. The senators were especially vocal about the potential for conflicts of interest among the consultants hired to conduct the reviews.

This is a real defect since the consultants were chosen by the banks that are paying them. And companies that have done work for these banks in the past, or that hope to do more work for them in the future, were not barred from taking on the assignments.

According to Ms. Williams, the comptroller’s office closely vetted the consultants to disqualify any that posed a conflict.

BUT Michael Olenick, a specialist in mortgage research, said he spotted a conflicted consultant after one hour of digging. Allonhill, a smallish firm appointed by Aurora Bank, a mortgage servicer, is headed by Sue Allon, whose previous small firm acted as credit risk manager in a 2003 mortgage pool for which Aurora oversaw the loans’ servicing. The prospectus on that deal noted that Murrayhill, Ms. Allon’s former firm, would “monitor and advise the servicers with respect to default management of the mortgage loans.” It also said that Murrayhill would make recommendations to the servicers regarding delinquent loans.

Now, under the comptroller office’s program, Ms. Allon’s firm may be analyzing the treatment of borrowers on whose loans it acted as credit risk manager. “This conflict is so deep and so obvious, how could anybody have missed it?” Mr. Olenick asked.

A representative for Ms. Allon wrote in an e-mail that Allonhill “focuses on a different area of the mortgage industry than Murrayhill did.” She said the foreclosure information Allonhill was reviewing for Aurora was “outside the scope of what was provided to Murrayhill.”

Aurora did not comment.

JPMorgan Chase’s hiring of Deloitte to analyze foreclosure practices also raises questions. Deloitte was the auditor not only for Washington Mutual, the huge mortgage lender that collapsed in 2008, but also for Bear Stearns, another defunct firm. Both WaMu and Bear were acquired by JPMorgan, so any loans they made may come under scrutiny by the same firm that audited their books.

Nye Lavalle, a foreclosure fraud expert who began warning bank executives about bad lending practices back in 1999, is troubled by this situation. “This review process is a wink-wink, nod-nod,” he said.

JPMorgan and Deloitte declined to comment.

Robert Garsson, a spokesman for the comptroller’s office, said the regulator was satisfied with its vetting process. “We were particularly focused on situations where consultants and law firms may have previously worked on issues they would be called upon to evaluate in the review process,” he said in a statement. “If we identify conflicts that were not apparent at the time the engagement letters were signed, we will take steps to address them.” 

Beyond the potential for conflicts, Ms. Cohen pointed to other flaws in the program. For instance, she said the years under review were not when most subprime loans were put into foreclosure. Many predatory loans are likely to be excluded from the analysis.

Even more problematic, Ms. Cohen said, is the fact that the program has left troubled borrowers who participate in it unprotected against further damage. For example, participants in line to get remuneration may be asked to give up their rights to defend themselves if they get into financial trouble again.

“This process is not meant to fix the original lending practices, so people need to hang on to their right to challenge the original loan later,” she said.

She also noted that borrowers in the process of having their cases reviewed could still lose their homes under the program. “O.C.C. has said their policy will involve an escalation process and expedited review of people in a certain proximity to a foreclosure sale,” Ms. Cohen said. “But the sale itself is not being stayed in any systematic way.”

None of this surprises Ms. Cohen or others familiar with the regulator. “This is the O.C.C . that we’re talking about,” she said. “It has a long record of favoring banks over homeowners.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=26509c6f8554de358b951616c8c5065a

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