While noting the upside to President Trump's new executive order to expand home lending among community financial institutions, the Mortgage Bankers Association's top executive added a note of caution, saying benefits won't appear immediately.
In a wide-ranging interview at Intercontinental Exchange's ICE Experience 2026 conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, MBA President and CEO Bob Broeksmit noted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's current staffing levels will hold back any quick overhaul of compliance rules that are among Trump's stated policy changes.
"The volume of work that's been assigned to the CFPB in this executive order is enormous. They're the agency that controls it all no matter what kind of lender you are," Broeksmit said in an on-stage conversation with ICE Mortgage Technology President Bob Hart.
He also added new policy changes ought to apply across all lender types, including independent mortgage banks. "A couple of these things in the executive order made it look like the changes were only going to apply to banks of a certain size," he continued, pointing out that any type of "dumb rule" remains dumb for all mortgage lenders.
"We're urging all of these changes to apply to everybody, or in other words, fix it for everyone. That will help banks, but we want all capital sources to benefit because we want all borrowers to benefit," Broeksmit continued.
Broeksmit's comments underscore much of the sentiment that has permeated throughout the mortgage industry since the president's announcement on Friday. The executive order addressed mortgage regulations that govern banks with less than $100 million in assets, including an allowance for more servicing to be kept in their books and more leeway on disclosure rules.
Trump's order, though, would require the CFPB to update rules and supervisory policies in order for changes to take effect, necessitating a pivot from the agency downsizing that has marked the current administration. At the beginning of his second term, the president and senior leaders effectively gutted the bureau, laying off scores of employees as it pushed to relax guidelines and enforcement.
MBA's call for expanding CFPB's oversight capabilities today represents a marked departure from the trade group's sometimes frosty relationship with the bureau under President Biden, with mortgage leaders often accusing then-Director Rohit Chopra of regulatory overreach.
In the last two years, however, Broeksmit and MBA have also warned of the dangers of too little oversight.
What does the M&A wave spell for the industry?
Elsewhere during the conversation, Broeksmit discussed the wave of consolidation that has swept across the mortgage industry for much of this decade. In 2025 particularly, the mortgage industry saw several headline-grabbing mortgage-and-acquisition deals from the likes of Rocket and others, but Broeksmit made efforts to assure the audience there was a place for companies of all sizes in assuaging industry worries about giant mega lenders eventually dominating the space.
"It's largely because this remains a relationship business," he said. "I think because of the relationships of the vast scale of this country that it'll stay that way."
Simultaneously acknowledging that some digital lenders will continue to nab their fair share of customers thanks to their capabilities to generate loan volumes quickly, Broeksmit expressed doubt that the future mortgage landscape could or should be dominated by just a few lenders
"When you manage to market share instead of managing the risks, bad things happen," he said.
