Kathy Kraninger

Senate Democrats are warning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be careful as it considers changes to its mortgage underwriting rules.

The Supreme Court may be closer to examining a key restraint on a president's ability to change CFPB leadership.

The bureau issued three policies removing the threat of legal liability for approved companies that test new products.

The event is the bureau's second in a series on consumer protection policy. The first dealt with the agency's authority to penalize firms for unfair, deceptive or abusive acts and practices.

Though advocates and industry are rarely aligned, they are starting to coalesce around a plan that would call for the elimination of the CFPB’s 43% debt-to-income limit as part of its qualified mortgage rule.

With the agency mulling changes to the “Qualified Mortgage” regulation, mortgage lenders say little-known standards for how they document a borrower’s income would be a good place to start.

Many in the industry say releasing GSE-backed loans from stringent underwriting rules has helped the housing market recover, but a new level of regulatory burden could reverse those gains.

The mortgage industry was caught off guard by regulators’ decision to cease special treatment for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in complying with underwriting rules. But how big of an impact will the new policy have?

The agency’s director said it will let a temporary GSE exemption from the “qualified mortgage” regulation expire.

The CFPB did not file any fair-lending enforcement actions in the 2018 fiscal year and did not refer any Equal Credit Opportunity Act violations to the Department of Justice.