Tag Archives: nonbanks

FinTech Disrupting The Mortgage Industry

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photo by www.cafecredit.com

photo by www.cafecredit.com

Researchers at the NY Fed have posted The Role of Technology in Mortgage Lending. There is no doubt that tech can disrupt the mortgage lending business much as it has done with others. The abstract reads,

Technology-based (“FinTech”) lenders increased their market share of U.S. mortgage lending from 2 percent to 8 percent from 2010 to 2016. Using market-wide, loan-level data on U.S. mortgage applications and originations, we show that FinTech lenders process mortgage applications about 20 percent faster than other lenders, even when controlling for detailed loan, borrower, and geographic observables. Faster processing does not come at the cost of higher defaults. FinTech lenders adjust supply more elastically than other lenders in response to exogenous mortgage demand shocks, thereby alleviating capacity constraints associated with traditional mortgage lending. In areas with more FinTech lending, borrowers refinance more, especially when it is in their interest to do so. We find no evidence that FinTech lenders target marginal borrowers. Our results suggest that technological innovation has improved the efficiency of financial intermediation in the U.S. mortgage market.

The report documents the significant extent to which FinTech firms have already disrupted the primary mortgage market. They also predict a whole lot more disruption coming down the pike:

Going forward, we expect that other lenders will seek to replicate the “FinTech model” characterized by electronic application processes with centralized, semi-automated underwriting operations. However, it is unclear whether traditional lenders or small institutions will all be able to adopt these practices as these innovations require significant reorganization and sizable investments. The end result could be a more concentrated mortgage market dominated by those firms that can afford to innovate. From a consumer perspective, we believe our results shed light on how mortgage credit supply is likely to evolve in the future. Specifically, technology will allow the origination process to be faster and to more easily accommodate changes in interest rates, leading to greater transmission of monetary policy to households via the mortgage market. Our findings also imply that technological diffusion may reduce inefficiencies in refinancing decisions, with significant benefits to U.S. households.

Our results have to be considered in the prevailing institutional context of the U.S. mortgage market. Specifically, at the time of our study FinTech lenders are non-banks that securitize their mortgages and do not take deposits. It remains to be seen whether we find the same benefits of FinTech lending as the model spreads to deposit-taking banks and their borrowers. Changes in banking regulation or the housing finance system may affect FinTech lenders going forward. Also, the benefits we document stem from innovations that rely on hard information; as these innovations spread, they may affect access to credit for those borrowers with applications that require soft information or borrowers that require direct communication with a loan officer. (37-38)

I think that the author’s predictions are right on target.

 

The Community Reinvestment Act: Guilty of What?

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Ray Brescia recently posted the final version of The Community Reinvestment Act: Guilty, but not as Charged to SSRN. The article wades into a seemingly technical debate that has extraordinary political and ideological implications: did misguided liberal policies push financial institutions to engage in the risky lending practices that led to the financial crisis. I never gave this argument much credit because the supposed chain of causation seemed too attenuated to me. Nonetheless, the debate has had legs among some policy analysts. The article generally agrees with my own — admittedly impressionistic — views of the matter. It also argues that the CRA needs to be modernized to reflect how mortgage credit is extended in the 21st century. The abstract reads,

Since its passage in 1977, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has charged federal bank regulators with “encourag[ing]” certain financial institutions “to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with safe and sound” banking practices. Even before the CRA became law – and ever since – it has become a flashpoint. Depending on your perspective, this simple and somewhat soft directive has led some to charge that it imposes unfair burdens on financial institutions and helped to fuel the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 and the financial crisis that followed. According to this argument, the CRA forced banks to make risky loans to less-than creditworthy borrowers. Others defend the CRA, arguing that it had little to do with the riskiest subprime lending at the heart of the crisis.

Research into the relationship between the mortgage crisis and the CRA generally vindicates those in the camp that believe the CRA had little to do with the risky lending that fueled these crises. At the same time, recent research by the National Bureau of Economic Research attempts to show that the CRA led to riskier lending, particularly in the period 2004-2006, when the mortgage market was overheated.

This paper reviews this and other existing research on the subject of the impact of the CRA on subprime lending to assess the role the CRA played in the mortgage crisis of 2007 and the financial crisis that followed. This paper also takes the analysis a step further, and asks what role the CRA played in failing to prevent these crises, particularly their impact on low- and moderate-income communities: i.e., the very communities the law was designed to protect. Based on a review of the best existing evidence, the initial verdict of not guilty – that the CRA did not cause the financial crisis, as some argue – still holds up on appeal. At the same time, as more fully described in this piece, an appreciation for the weaknesses inherent in the law’s structure, when combined with an understanding of the manner in which it was enforced by regulators, lead one to a different conclusion; although the CRA did not cause the crisis, it failed to prevent the very harms it was designed to prevent from befalling the very communities it is supposed to protect.

The defects in the CRA that emerge from this review, in total, suggest not that the CRA was too strong, but, rather, too weak. They also point to important reforms that should be put in place to strengthen and fine-tune the CRA to ensure that it can meet its important goal: ensuring that financial institutions meet the needs of low- and moderate-income communities, communities for which access to capital and banking services on fair terms is a necessary condition for economic development, let alone economic survival. Such reforms could include expanding the scope of the CRA to cover more financial institutions, creating a private right of action that would grant private and public litigants an opportunity to enforce the law through the courts, and having regulators enforce the CRA in such a way that will put more pressure on banks to modify more underwater mortgages.

I doubt that this article will be the final word on this topic, both because the existing empirical work seems inconclusive and also because the topic is one that has important ideological implications for the right and the left (‘government caused the financial crisis’ versus ‘corporate greed run amok caused the crisis’). Nonetheless, this article provides a thorough critique of one of the leading empirical studies of the topic.

Reiss on Lawsky’s Departure from DFS

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Bloomberg interviewed me for Lawsky Leaving After $3 Billion in Fines Makes a Mark. The article reads in part,

When Ocwen Financial Corp. (OCN) shares soared on the news that regulator Benjamin Lawsky, who’s probing the company, will step down, Bill Miller shrugged.

The next head of New York’s Department of Financial Services will probably be as aggressive as Lawsky, continuing the uncertainty for Ocwen, said Miller, who runs the $2.2 billion Legg Mason Opportunity Trust. (LMOPX) Lawsky’s investigations of nonbank mortgage servicers such as Ocwen have caused their shares to plunge.

“Ocwen has been rallying on the view that with him gone that will lift the burden, but I would be surprised if the next person didn’t at least follow through in the way Lawsky was going to,” said Miller, whose fund, which invests in Nationstar Mortgage Holdings Inc., has gained an annual 38 percent since 2011.

In three years as New York’s financial watchdog, Lawsky extracted more than $3 billion in fines from global banks, called for the firing of executives and questioned whether the lightly regulated nonbank servicers are properly handling modifications and defaults. As the department’s first superintendent, Lawsky hired experienced lawyers from the New York Attorney General’s office, creating a strong enforcement culture that will continue after he’s gone, said Kathryn Judge, an associate professor focusing on financial institutions at Columbia University Law School.

“Similar to what we saw Eliot Spitzer doing as attorney general, being in New York allowed Lawsky to step in where federal regulators hadn’t,” Judge said. “By stepping into this role at a formative stage for the regulator, he created a footprint. That legacy will survive.”

*     *     *

The superintendent’s work has reflected favorably on the governor, said David Reiss, a professor who specializes in real estate and consumer protection at Brooklyn Law School. That will encourage Cuomo to select a successor who’s equally dynamic, Reiss said.

Cuomo will want to build on Lawsky’s record of protecting homeowners from improper foreclosures and holding mortgage servicers accountable, said Reiss.

Chief of staff Anthony Albanese, general counsel Daniel Alter, and capital markets division head Maria Filipakis are among the top people that Lawsky brought to the department. One of them may be in a position to replace him, according to a lawyer who has had extensive dealings with the superintendent. The lawyer asked not to be named because he’s not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

The successor will have to focus more on regulation and finding answers to the issues the department uncovered with nonbank servicers and insurers, said Eric Dinallo, who served as New York’s superintendent of insurance from 2007 to 2009.

“Each superintendent or commissioner wants to put their unique stamp on the agency,” he said.

Servicer Safety & Soundness and Consumer Protection

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The FHFA’s Inspector General issued an audit, FHFA Actions to Manage Enterprise Risks from Nonbank Servicers Specializing in Troubled Mortgages. The audit identified two major risks in the current environment:

  • Using short-term financing to buy servicing rights for troubled mortgage loans that may only begin to pay out after long-term work to resolve their difficulties. This practice can jeopardize the companies’ operations and also the Enterprises’ timely payment guarantees and reputation for loans they back; and
  • Assuming responsibilities for servicing large volumes of mortgage loans that may be beyond what their infrastructures can handle. For example, of the 30 largest mortgage servicers, those that were not banks held a 17% share of the mortgage servicing market at the end of 2013, up from 9% at the end of 2012, and 6% at the end of 2011. This rise in nonbank special servicers has been accompanied by consumer complaints, lawsuits, and other regulatory actions as the servicers’ workload outstrips their processing capacity. (1-2)

The audit notes that “nonbank special servicers do not have a prudential safety and soundness regulator at the federal level for their mortgage servicing operations.” (6)

I think the important story here is more about consumer protection than it is about safety and soundness regulation. That is not to say that the Inspector General’s audit ignored consumer protection. Indeed, it it does spend a significant amount of time addressing that topic, noting that other federal regulators such as the CFPB have also zeroed in on the impact that non-bank servicers have on consumers.

But the safety and soundness risks may a bit overblown. A significant number of consumers, on the other hand, continue to be treated poorly, poorly, poorly by servicers.