Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officials met last week with Treasury Department representatives on the topic of loan originator compensation. Those in attendance reported that the CFPB’s flat-fee compensation plans are a “done deal,” and National Mortgage News’ Paul Muolo summed it up late last week:
Roughly 18 representatives of the residential lending industry sat around a table this past Wednesday at the Treasury Department in Washington with various members of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. According to those in attendance, the messages delivered by the CFPB were loud and clear: (*)Flat fee compensation is a done deal. Deal with it. (*)CFPB wants licensing and regulatory parity for banks and nonbanks alike. (*)If you have payments made to affiliates your life will be more complicated and difficult. (*)The CFPB doesn’t care that its mortgage compensation proposal will destroy the lending industry and hand the business over to the nation’s largest banks…
A few other notes about the meeting: no representatives from trade organizations were allowed to sit at the U-shaped table with the CFPB officials. Trade reps were relegated to the audience. Trade groups, however, were permitted to submit the names of five people who would sit at the table. CFPB chief Richard Cordray was not there in person and instead phoned it in and then departed after five or ten minutes. Another CFPB forum for large banks and wholesalers was being held down in North Carolina, Go figure…
Read the rest of Muolo’s recap.
Written by Elizabeth Ecker
