Mortgage bankers likely won't see any official proposals to revamp servicing compensation until late summer, Ginnie Mae president Ted Tozer said Friday morning.
In an interview with National Mortgage News, Tozer said regulators – including both the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) – "are trying to find a happy medium."
FHFA and HUD, in consultation with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the mortgage industry are exploring changing the minimum servicing payments offered to processors of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie product.
Those minimums currently stand at 25 basis points for GSE loans and 44 basis points for GNMA product (Federal Housing Administration/Department of Veterans Affairs). Various proposals have surfaced that would cut those minimum payments to as low as zero.
Tozer said the "happy medium" refers to "how much you drop it [the servicing fee]."
Mortgage bankers who have spoken with regulators about the issue believe a servicing payment of zero is no longer on the table, but that doesn't mean the minimum will not be trimmed or changed in some fashion or another.
Fannie Mae, which won't talk about its position on MSR payments, is leaning toward a flat fee "for service" while Freddie Mac and Ginnie are open to some type of reduction, but nothing major, industry sources close to the discussions said.
Tozer would not comment on where Ginnie stands right now, but said he is familiar with proposals that would leave "skin in the game" for servicers.
On Thursday representatives from several servicing advisory firms met with regulators in Washington at FHFA's headquarters to discuss the issue. More meetings between the industry and regulators are planned for the weeks and months ahead, Tozer said.
