[Alice] Hello, Dave and hello listeners. There’s a lot going on at all the agencies as they’re all trying to reorganize, and as you’ve heard in the news, Fannie and Freddie having their boards shuffled quite substantially that there isn’t a lot coming out of the agencies. So, for my report today, I just wanna remind you that CFPB does have two proposed rules that are still open for comment. One is a proposed rule and one is an advanced notice of a proposed rule making, and both are related to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The first one is protection from harmful data broker practices. This is under Reg V, which is the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Comments are open until April 2nd, and the idea here is to stop data brokers from selling your personal information, data brokers, as you might originally think with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, certainly Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion are in that bucket, but because of the definition in the Fair Credit Reporting Act, that definition doesn’t expand to companies that are just the term implies, brokering the data. They’ve acquired data and they are turning around and reselling. And this is a industry that is, as you can imagine, growing substantially with all the data that’s available from the internet and so this proposed rule is attempting to redefine and make sure that group is included in the definition as a consumer reporting agency and also making sure that things like marketing are not considered a legitimate business purpose. They wanna make sure that the brokers, once they’re included in this, that the type of business that would fall under this rule does include marketing and that you would have to get a consumer’s consent. Because if it’s a legitimate business purpose as we do in mortgage banking we basically have a legitimate business purpose so we can run a credit report. For the brokers in this case, they would not be able to say it’s marketing and so that’s a legitimate business purpose. So consumers consent would have to be much more specific. So, this is a proposed rule. I think that just impacts us personally as opposed to really making any fundamental changes in the industry from a mortgage perspective. So check that out if you have any passions about making sure data brokers are included in the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The second one is a fair Credit Reporting Act modification. It’s an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, and you would have to get the comments in by April 7th. This one is about adding coerced debt. So the CFPB received a petition that was related to individuals who have gone through violent abuse and have had debts where they were coerced into making the debt under extreme circumstances and the petition gave some telling statistics on how often this happens. So in this advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, there are several questions that the CFPB is asking for comments on to really find out is this an issue that they need to modify? The Fair Credit Reporting Act to include that if you had coerced debt on your credit report, that you could still use identity theft protections that are under the Fair Credit Reporting Act by having this coerced debt definition included. So for example, you would have the ability to block debt. You would have all the rights under Fair Credit Reporting Act if you could claim that I had coerced debt and therefore that was identity theft or and a debt that was opened without my consent. Right now that’s very gray. The I’ll let the credit agencies decide how they’re handling that. But based on the way this rule is worded, it implies that’s not considered a debt that someone would have the rights for implementing their identity theft protections. So there are about oh six or seven questions here that you should take a look at. If you feel that this is a way to benefit consumers. Obviously, if someone has the right to be able to implement the identity theft rules under FCRA, that would help better their credit score. So as mortgage bankers, we want everybody available for financing these days, and so maybe that alone is a reason to get in there and say yes. Let’s give this protection to anybody if it will help them with their credit scores. So those are the two rules that are open right now that you can still participate in light of all the chaos going on in Washington. That’s my report for today. Dave, back to you.
Alice Alvey, Master CMB
She handles development of their World Class Training program designed to support UHM partners and organizational effectiveness.
Prior to UHM, Alice served as Senior Vice President at Indecomm leading the Indecomm-Mortgage U division, Internal QA and Compliance and SaaS technologies. Indecomm acquired Mortgage U in 2013, where Alice was President/Co-founder, providing training and consulting since 1996. Prior to MU she served as SVP of Operations at a national bank overseeing operations for wholesale, retail and correspondent from underwriting through servicing, and compliance.
She has been in the trenches of mortgage lending operations from application through servicing for over 30 years. Her authoring work in training content, policies and procedures and the FHA/VA Practical guides illustrates her ability to bridge regulatory requirements with day-to-day operations.
Alice has been a weekly contributor to the Lykken on Lending show since its beginning in April 2009 and has made her weekly contributions to 450+ episodes!