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Mortgage Company Wins Mortgage Loan Officer Overtime Trial
Recently, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found that a mortgage company proved that it properly classified an employee as an outside sales person under the Fair Labor Standards Act and therefore was not required to pay the employee overtime. Cougill v. Prospect Mortgage, LLC, No. 13-1433 (E.D.Va. Feb. 5, 2014). The suit is one of many that have been filed across the country involving claims by employees that they were misclassified and were not paid overtime or minimum wage. The verdict came on the same day the court ruled in favor of the mortgage company on summary judgment in a separate, but similar case. Hantz v. Prospect Mortgage, LLC, No. 13-1435, 2014 WL 463019 (E.D.Va. Feb. 5. 2014). In that case, the court held that the loan officer’s claims were time barred under the FLSA’s two-year statute of limitations because the officer failed to demonstrate the alleged misclassification would constitute a willful violation, which would have extended the time limit by a year. Although its holding on the statute of limitations issue was dispositive of the case, the court went on to address the plaintiff’s status as an outside sales person. The court reasoned that in determining FLSA classification, the inquiry is whether the employee performs tasks critical to the sales process away from the office on more than an occasional basis. The fact that the employee may also perform a significant amount of work inside the mortgage company’s office does not limit the exemption. In this case, the court noted that the loan officer’s outside meetings with realtors, time spent distributing flyers, attending open houses, and giving seminars demonstrated that the officer “customarily and regularly” engaged in outside sales activity sufficient to trigger the exemption, notwithstanding the officer’s testimony that he also worked considerable hours inside the office. The court also rejected the officer’s argument that the exemption should not apply because he did not make any sales at a borrower’s home or place of business, noting that where the actual sale occurs is irrelevant.
CFPB Deputy Director Promises Vigilant Supervision, Enforcement Of Mortgage Servicing Rules
On February 19, CFPB Deputy Director Steve Antonakes spoke at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual servicing conference and detailed the CFPB’s expectations for servicers as they implement the new servicing rules that took effect last month.
Mr. Antonakes’s remarks about the CFPB’s plans to supervise and enforce compliance with the new rules are the most assertive to date. Until now, the CFPB’s public position has been that “in the early months” after the rules took effect, the CFPB would not look for strict compliance, but rather would assess whether institutions have made “good faith efforts” to come into “substantial compliance.”
Mr. Antonakes clarified this position, stating that “[s]ervicers have had more than a year now to work on implementation” of “basic practices of customer service that should have been implemented long ago” and that “[a] good faith effort . . . does not mean servicers have the freedom to harm consumers.” He went on to state that “[m]ortgage servicing rule compliance is a significant priority for the Bureau. Accordingly, we will be vigilant about overseeing and enforcing these rules.”
Default Servicing and Foreclosures
Specifically, the CFPB expects that, “in these very early days,” servicers will (i) identify and correct “technical issues”; (ii) “conduct outreach to ensure that all consumers in default know their options”; and (iii) “assess loss mitigation applications with care, so that consumers who qualify under [a servicer’s] own standards get the loss mitigation that saves them – and the investor – from foreclosure.” Mr. Antonakes acknowledged that “foreclosures are an important part of the business, but they shouldn’t happen unless they’re necessary and they must be done according to relevant law. We expect the new rules to go a long way to reduce consumer harm for all consumers with mortgages, especially as these rules work in concert with the existing prohibition against unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices.”
Servicing Transfers
Mr. Antonakes specifically detailed expectations concerning mortgage servicing rights transfers. He stated that the CFPB expects servicers to “pay exceptionally close attention to servicing transfers and understand [that the CFPB] will as well. . . . Our rules mandate policies and procedures to transfer ‘all information and documents’ in order to ensure that the new servicer has accurate information about the consumer’s account. We’re going to hold you to that. Servicing transfers where the new servicers are not honoring existing permanent or trial loan modifications will not be tolerated. Struggling borrowers being told to pay incorrect higher amounts because of the failure to honor an in-process loan modification – and then being punished with foreclosure for their inability to pay the incorrect amounts – will not be tolerated. There will be no more shell games where the first servicer says the transfer ended all of its responsibility to consumers and the second servicer says it got a data dump missing critical documents.”
CFPB Consumer Advisory Board Meeting To Focus On Consumer Reporting
The CFPB announced this week that its next Consumer Advisory Board meeting will be held on February 27, in Washington, DC, and that the sole public session will focus on the “consumer experience in the credit reporting market.” Non-public sessions of the two-day event will cover, among other things, the HMDA rulemaking, the debt collection rulemaking, and the CFPB’s general approach to regulation.
FHFA OIG Recommends Increased Oversight Of Repurchase Late Fees
On February 12, the FHFA Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report on the FHFA’s oversight of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s handling of aged repurchase demands. The OIG found that (i) the FHFA’s published guidance for aged repurchase demands essentially let each of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac establish its own model for penalizing seller-servicers; (ii) Freddie Mac continued to employ its existing right to assess late fees on seller-servicers for not resolving repurchase demands timely, which resulted in missed assessments of up to $284 million due in large part to inconsistently waving, enforcing, and excepting late fees; and (iii) Fannie Mae continued without an ability to assess repurchase late fees, claiming a $5.4 million cost to establish the program necessary to do so was prohibitive, but failing to realize the potential benefits from a continuous stream of penalty fees. The OIG recommended that the FHFA (i) promptly quantify the potential benefit of implementing a repurchase late fee program at Fannie Mae, and then determine whether the potential cost outweighs the potential benefit; (ii) direct Freddie Mac to develop an expanded repurchase late fee report that would provide Freddie Mac and FHFA management with needed information to manage and assess Freddie Mac’s repurchase late fee program more effectively; and (iii) direct Freddie Mac to provide the FHFA with information on any assessed but uncollected late fees associated with the repurchase claims so that such fees can be considered in repurchase settlement negotiations and documented in accordance with the Office of Conservatorship Operations’ Settlement Policy.
Democratic Lawmakers Urge Federal Reserve Board To Increase Direct Role In Supervision And Enforcement
On February 11, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD) sent a letter to newly appointed Federal Reserve Board Chairman Janet Yellen, asking that she reconsider the Board’s policy of delegating supervisory and enforcement powers to staff. The lawmakers cite a recent letter from former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in which he explained that in the last 10 years, the Board of Governors voted on only 11 of nearly 1,000 enforcement actions, and that under current application of the Federal Reserve’s enforcement delegation policy, the Federal Reserve can enter into consent orders without ever receiving formal approval of senior staff. The letter asks for a change in policy that would require the Board to retain greater authority over the Federal Reserve’s enforcement and supervisory activities. Specifically, the lawmakers recommend that (i) the Board vote on any consent order that involves $1 million or more or that requires a bank officer to be removed and/or new management installed; (ii) staff formally notify the Board before entering into a consent order under delegated authority; (iii) each Board member be provided with the necessary staffing capacity to review and analyze pending enforcement actions; and (iv) all Board members receive a copy of all letters sent to the Chairman or another Board member by a committee or member of Congress.
OCC Updates Mortgage Handbook, Retirement Plan Products Handbook
On February 7, the OCC issued an updated Mortgage Banking booklet of the Comptroller's Handbook. The revised booklet (i) provides updated guidance to examiners and bankers on assessing the quantity of risk associated with mortgage banking and the quality of mortgage banking risk management; (ii) makes wholesale changes to the functional areas of production, secondary marketing, servicing, and mortgage servicing rights; and (iii) addresses recent CFPB amendments to Regulation X and Regulation Z, as well as other Dodd-Frank related statutory and regulatory changes. The updated booklet replaces a similarly titled booklet issued in March 1996, as well as Section 750 (Mortgage Banking) issued in November 2008 as part of the former OTS Examination Handbook. On February 12, the OCC issued a revised Retirement Plan Products and Services booklet of the Comptroller’s Handbook that (i) updates examination procedures and groups them by risk; (ii) updates references and adds a list of abbreviations; (iii) adds references to recent significant U.S. Department of Labor regulations and policy issuances; (iv) adds a discussion of Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering and Regulation R; and (v) adds a discussion of board and senior management responsibilities regarding oversight of risk management.
New York Banking Regulator Concerned With Mortgage Servicing Rights Transfers
On February 12, New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky released excerpts of remarks he delivered to the New York Bankers Association, which focused on the “troubling trend” of “the rapid and dramatic growth of so-called ‘non-bank mortgage servicers.’” Mr. Lawsky explained that because banks are being given “less credit” for mortgage servicing rights (MSRs) with respect to capital, they are offloading MSRs to non-bank mortgage servicers rather than building up additional capital. Further, he expressed concern that non-bank mortgage services are often more lightly regulated, and indicated that regulators need to intervene on the front end of MSR transactions to prevent undue harm to homeowners before it occurs. Mr. Lawsky indicated that the DFS will have more to say on the topic in the coming weeks and months.
Eleventh Circuit Holds Lender Can Require Increased Flood Insurance Coverage
For the second time in less than five months, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the FHA Model Mortgage sets a floor, not a ceiling, on the amount of flood insurance coverage a borrower must maintain. Feaz v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., No. 13-10230, 2014 WL 503149 (11th Cir. Feb. 10, 2014); see also Kolbe v. BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP, 738 F.3d 432 (1st Cir. Sept. 2013). On February 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld a district court’s dismissal of a borrower’s claim for breach of contract and violations of various other state laws, concluding that the FHA Model Mortgage “unambiguously makes the federally required flood-insurance amount the minimum, not the maximum, the borrower must have.” Thus, the court concluded that the lender did not violate the mortgage when it required the borrower to increase her flood insurance coverage from the minimum amount required by federal law to the replacement cost value of her home or the maximum available under the National Flood Insurance Program, whichever was less. In reaching its decision, the court sided with the United States, which filed an amicus brief in this case and in a First Circuit case decided in September 2013, reasoning, in part, that any other interpretation would undermine federal housing policy.
Federal Reserve Board Proposes To Repeal Duplicative Regulations Amend Identity Theft Red Flags Rule
On February 12, the Federal Reserve Board proposed to repeal its Regulation DD, which implements the TISA, and Regulation P, which implements Section 504 of the GLBA because the Dodd-Frank Act transferred rulemaking authority for those laws to the CFPB, and the CFPB has already issued interim final rules implementing them. The Board also proposed to amend the definition of “creditor” in its Identity Theft Red Flags rule, which implements Section 615 of the FCRA. Generally, the Indemnity Theft Red Flags rule requires each financial institution and creditor that holds any consumer account to develop and implement an identity theft prevention program. The proposed revision will exclude from the foregoing requirements businesses that do not regularly and in the ordinary course of business (i) obtain or use consumer reports in connection with a credit transaction; (ii) furnish information to consumer reporting agencies in connection with a credit transaction; or (iii) advance funds to or on behalf of a person. The Board will accept comments on the proposal for 60 days from publication in the Federal Register.
New York DFS Identifies Potential Next Steps for Virtual Currency Regulation
On February 11, at an event on the future of virtual currency, New York DFS Superintendent Benjamin M. Lawsky reiterated his intention to move forward with a virtual currency rulemaking this year as the DFS is “increasingly coming to the conclusion that simply applying our existing money transmission regulations to virtual currency firms is not sufficient.” Mr. Lawsky’s remarks follow a recent two-day DFS hearing regarding the potential state regulation of virtual currency. According to his most recent remarks, the proposal may include a specifically tailored BitLicense that adapts existing money transmission rules to virtual currency. In addition, the proposed rules may, among other things, include “a strong set of specially tailored, model consumer disclosure rules” that could address, for example, the irreversible nature of most transactions, the need to keep private keys private, and potential volatility. The DFS proposal may also seek to address capital, collateral, net worth, and investment requirements. Mr. Lawsky explained that the DFS would like more input about whether it should require licensed firms to only use public ledgers and whether to ban or restrict the use of tumblers by licensed firms.