Fair Lending Shake-Ups: CFPB Vacates Townstone Settlement, FHFA Ends GSEs' Special Purpose Credit Programs — The Consumer Finance Podcast
The Latest on Junk Fees and New York's Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act — The Consumer Finance Podcast
The Latest on HUD's Disparate Impact Rule - The Consumer Finance Podcast
Title Insurance and Your Transaction
Law Brief®: Robert Wolf, Alexander Tiktin and Richard Schoenstein Discuss the Continuing Foreclosure/Eviction Moratorium
Credit Eco to Go Podcast - Not a Normal Mortgage Crisis: How the Mortgage Industry Weathered the Pandemic
Not a Normal Mortgage Crisis: How the Mortgage Industry Weathered the Pandemic
A federal judge has rejected the Trump Administration’s request to release from court supervision a bank that had been accused of discriminatory lending....more
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp recently signed legislation that will impact the banking and financial services industries in the state. It becomes effective July 1, 2025. The Georgia General Assembly adjourned the 2025 legislative...more
In the previous 3 articles of this 4-part series I identified and explained three types of fatal flaws in the 2023 CRA rule: 1. The unreliable and sometimes misleading performance ratings based on unrealistic assessment...more
Led by the California Mortgage Bankers Association, five lenders have made commitments to provide mortgage relief for the victims of the California wildfires....more
The CFPB recently issued a final rule increasing the asset exemption threshold under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA)....more
On December 17, NYDFS introduced a new regulation, NEW 3 NYCRR 120, Compliance with Banking Law Section 28-bb, which would require nonbank mortgage bankers in New York State to collect and report data related to home loans to...more
The start of the second Trump administration is fast approaching, and it raises prospects of a renewed push for federal-level fair access to banking requirements. The first Trump administration came close to enacting such a...more
On October 29, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the state’s Division on Civil Rights (DCR) released a report detailing the findings of a multi-year investigation into Republic First Bank (Republic) and its...more
On Tuesday, September 10, the Federal Reserve announced a reproposal of the much discussed and awaited Basel III Endgame. However, before we dive into the reproposal, it is important to take a step back and look at how we got...more
Many bankers hear the term “Statistical Significance” but don’t know what it means and how it is relevant to potential fair lending violations. Typically, when an examiner is evaluating if a bank is redlining, they will...more
As any bank professional regulatory compliance professional knows redlining is the hottest issue today and has been since Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the “Combatting Redlining Initiative” in October 2021. Since...more
In a recent article in National Mortgage Professional entitled "Manufacturing Fair Lending”, former chief of the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section at the Department of Justice under Attorney General William Barr, Paul...more
In May 2024, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) published a Request for Input (RFI) titled “Federal Home Loan Bank Core Mission Activities and Mission Achievement” with comments due to the FHFA on July 15, 2024. This...more
In emails in recent months we've warned bankers about the extremely aggressive enforcement of anti-redlining policies. This is becoming more and more obvious every day as more banks get threatened with referral to the DOJ....more
For the last two years, the federal regulatory agencies have been waging a war on redlining by mortgage lenders — a war that shows no signs of abating. Originally published in Law360 - December 12, 2023....more
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and state authorities have agreed to a consent order with a large national bank to resolve allegations that the bank engaged in a pattern or practice of lending discrimination by affecting...more
There has been much understandable handwringing about the new CRA and its complexity as well as the high CRA exam failure rate predicted by regulators based on the new assessment areas and the higher performance standards...more
As I write this article the Department of Justice is pursuing a record-breaking number of “redlining” cases against banks and mortgage lenders. The “Anti-redlining Initiative” was announced October 22, 2021, by Attorney...more
The latest edition of the Payments Docket, our roundup of key litigation involving the payments industry, features fintechs and nonbanks continuing to face regulatory scrutiny, a pair of processors failing to process...more
On September 27, the DOJ announced a $9 million settlement agreement with a Rhode Island-based community bank to resolve allegations that the bank engaged in a pattern or practice of lending discrimination by engaging in...more
In this month's article, we share some of our top "bites" for the prior month covered during the July 2023 webinar. Bite 10: Public Inquiry Launched into Credit Card and Loan Products for Healthcare Costs - On July 7,...more
In Enter. Bank v. The Ingros Fam. LLC, et al., 2022 WL 2283392 (Bankr. W.D. Pa. June 23, 2022), a lender faced a potentially costly decision when it mistakenly left the word “The” from a borrower’s name. In Ingros, First...more
[co-author: John L. Ropiequet] The fair lending cases filed by Miami against large mortgage lenders in 2013, in which the city sought to recover lost property tax revenues and increased municipal expenses allegedly caused...more
Year In Review - Anand Raman, the head of Skadden’s Consumer Financial Services (CFS) practice, began the conference by providing a summary of notable events and trends over the past year relating to consumer financial...more
In many cases, borrowers and lenders are working together to weather this crisis. A forbearance agreement is often the first step—after a pre-negotiation agreement is entered into. A forbearance agreement can benefit both...more