Ah, August, when summer is at its best--bright, warm and full of vacation respite. It's the last gasp for those enjoying a more relaxed approach to living--except, of course, for those in the mortgage industry who were jolted from their ease on July 21 when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finally inflated to its operational posture. * The mortgage business awoke that day to regulatory changes of historic proportion. In one fell swoop, all U.S. consumer financial protection functions had been moved en masse to the new bureau from their old homes in the Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In all, 109 U.S. financial institutions of $10 billion or more in asset size--and countless other non-financial institutions--will be regulated by the CFPB. * Much debated since its conception in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the CFPB alternately is cast as an economic savior or the devil reincarnate, depending on where you stand on the spectrum. * An independent entity within the Federal Reserve System, the bureau will be the sole regulator charged with enforcing a basket of "enumerated consumer laws," most of them familiar to the mortgage industry--from the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA) to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), from the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) to the Truth in Lending Act (TILA)--and a host of others. Where the rubber meets the road for the mortgage business--at least for the moment--is with two rules, yet to be fully defined, that appear like a twister in the distance heading toward mortgage originations.
