Enforcement of RESPA has been shifting under the current administration, creating questions within the industry about where oversight will come from.
Title and mortgage professionals must navigate oversight from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as well as state attorneys general, consumer protection agencies, multi-state examination teams and departments of insurance.
In the “RESPA Review: Navigating Multi-level Oversight” webinar, guest speakers discussed the CFPB’s area of focus, how to track evolving rules and the growing role of state-level examinations and enforcement.
Noah Gillespie, of counsel at Greenberg Traurig LLP, led the discussion alongside Loretta Salzano, founding partner of Franzén and Salzano. The webinar was moderated by Leslie Wyatt, director of regulatory compliance with SoftPro.
The current administration has “essentially gutted” the CFPB, Salzano said, but has also insisted on the bureau following formal agency procedures.
“Instead of announcing policy through blogs or other kinds of bulletins and unofficial postings, the CFPB now will be acting through notice-and-comment rulemaking, which really makes it much easier for all of us, not just to have a dialogue and have our opinions on promulgated regulations considered before they are, in fact, effective, but to have certainty. We have the opportunity to be heard, and the CFPB has to listen to what we say,” Salzano said.
Gillespie addressed some of the more uncertain changes regarding the future of the CFPB, its rulemaking agenda, and a possible permanent director of the agency.
“One of the first things that has both a short-term and long-term impact is [that Congress lowered] the CFPB’s funding cap. The CFPB gets its funding not through the normal appropriations process — at least historically, the CFPB would not be shutting down with the rest of the government — but through the Federal Reserve system of which it is a part. [The new limit] is going to be about half the level of what it was before, and [the bureau] was already spending near that cap previously,” Gillespie said. “To the extent that the bureau needs more money, it needs to go ask for that to be appropriated from Congress, and that seems unlikely to occur.”
The speakers also covered the changes in the enforcement landscape, the CFPB’s proposed rulemakings, examinations and investigations at the state and federal levels, and explored affiliated business arrangements and other key RESPA safe harbors.
To watch the full webinar, follow this link and fill out the form on the right side of the page.