Links in “Agencies”

Federal Housing Administration's Patricia McClung will be leaving to join the CFPB to monitor the impact of rules and regs for lending and servicing that took effect earlier this year. [8/18/14]

OCC has released this month’s enforcement actions which consist of one cease and desist, two civil money penalty orders, two formal agreements, one corrective action, one removal order, and five terminations of existing enforcement actions. [8/18/14]

The CFPB shut down operations of USA Discounters Ltd, which Director Cordray describes as a company that, "was designed to exploit unsuspecting servicemembers." The company sold certain financial protections that are inherently provided under the SCRA to active servicemembers. Cordray described this company's actions as "unconscionable" and said he will not allow it to continue. [8/15/14]

The CFPB is required to recalculate the specific amounts and percents of several provisions within Regulation Z each year. Having done so, the CFPB has issued the final rule regarding these matters. These changes will be effective starting January 1, 2015. [8/15/14]

With a proposed rule and multiple advisories and announcements over the past few months, FinCEN has kept extremely busy. It can be a handful to remember, but this article provides a summary of FinCEN's hottest announcements this summer. [8/15/14]

A New Jersey mortgage company settled with the HUD for $104,000 over discriminatory lending practices against people with a medical disability. The company required, among other things, 69 disabled applicants to provide doctor’s notes or letters from the Social Security Administration that their disability income would continue for three years. [8/14/14]

FinCEN has issued an advisory on the importance of nurturing a culture of BSA/AML compliance, including ensuring that compliance concerns are not compromised by revenue interests, providing adequate human and technological resources, and engaging independent and competent testing. [8/13/14]

FinCEN proudly reports that 105 U.S. financial institutions provide banking operations to marijuana-related businesses and that it has reviewed more than 180,000 (62%) of more than 290,000 Suspicious Activity Reports, but doesn't mention that those numbers mean 99% of U.S. banks won't touch marijuana-related businesses and 38% of the filed SARs go unreviewed. [8/13/14]

The example of Amerisave can serve as a warning to all lending institutions, including credit unions. CFPB's Richard Cordray summarizes: "Amerisave lured consumers in with deceptive advertising, trapped them with costly upfront fees, and then illegally overcharged them for services from an undisclosed affiliate. By the time consumers could have discovered the advertised low rates were too good to be true, they had already committed to pay hundreds of dollars to Amerisave." [8/13/14]

Although neither the FDIC or NCUA back virtual currencies like Bitcoin, the CFPB is adding them to the complaint database. They warn consumers about the risks of virtual currency, but worry that "the hype surrounding virtual currencies...[is] in an effort to lure consumers to spend money, which is then stolen." [8/12/14]