InfoBytes Blog
CFPB Director Cordray Delivers Remarks at MBA Conference
On October 25, CFPB Director Richard Cordray delivered remarks to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). Cordray highlighted the CFPB's role in helping the housing economy to recover, including regulatory actions from 2014 to the present. Director Cordray also advised industry participants that they should expect more regulation and oversight over the coming year, explaining that the cost of compliance, though burdensome, was "inevitable" in light of the "far-reaching" effects of the financial crisis that Congress was trying to fix.
Director Cordray revealed three priority areas for enforcement and supervision in the next year: (i) consumer complaints, explaining that the CFPB will now require underperforming servicers to document the technology and process changes used to implement the agency’s recently released servicing regulations, because, among other reasons, the Bureau considers monitoring and addressing the process through which complaints are handled part of "a basic component" of any compliance effort; (ii) redlining, noting that the Bureau has identified “redlining” as a target for its supervisory work in the coming year, and has teamed up with the DOJ to bring “major enforcement actions” against institutions found to be discriminatory in their lending practices; (iii) RESPA violations, announcing that the CFPB will continue to adhere to its 2015 bulletin regarding marketing servicing agreements despite the recent PHH ruling. He further noted that the PHH case "is not final at this point" and that the Bureau "respectfully disagrees" with the finding.