Providing the Insight and Clarity on ATR-QM Rules' Impact on Your Consumer Protection Strategy.
We provide advice to help your team originate loans in ways that comply with the latest ATR/QM rule.
Documenting applicants' ability to pay may seem straightforward. But sometimes, it can be challenging to fit real-life scenarios into a regulatory box.
The TCA team understands these challenges, the complex rules for validating and documenting ATR, and the new requirements for originating QM loans.
As a result, we can show you how to minimize your ATR/QM risk when originating mortgage loans.
We start by getting a complete picture of your operations to understand the QM and non-QM loans you offer and the business strategy behind that product mix.
We review your policies, procedures, and training during our exam and recommend modifications to create a more airtight compliance strategy.
For example, we scrutinize your underwriting practices, ensuring that you're considering all eight key factors, such as a prospective borrower's income and assets, debt-to-income ratio, and credit history, when determining someone's ability to repay a mortgage.
We also check that you're correctly using third-party records to verify borrowers' information and whether you're documenting your process sufficiently.
Through our exploration, your vulnerabilities become apparent, and whether your overall ATR/QM risk strategy is appropriate for your bank's size, location, and goals. Additionally, we also suggest improvements to help you address consumer protection laws.
Our review also entails the following:
- Checking whether you have a consistent way of calculating DTI ratios
- Determining how you preserve and track loan documentation for the required three years.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of your training and how you're keeping loan officers, loan processors, and board management up to date on the newest ATR/QM wrinkles.
- Assessing whether your monitoring schedule is sufficient
Our exam will give you confidence that you're complying with the letter of the law, ensuring that your policies and procedures illustrate that you're taking appropriate steps to determine borrowers' ability to repay a mortgage.
You can count on TCA's A Better Way to help you adhere to ATR/QM rules and reduce your risk.
Key deliverables include:
- Advising you on ways to revamp your policies and procedures to minimize your risk
- Validating that you’ve accurately documented your borrower’s Ability to Repay.
- Ensuring you have followed new Price-Based rules when originating Qualified Mortgages.
- Recommending and developing training and educational resources.
Additional Compliance Topics
Making SAR Narratives Error‐Proof
Each SAR field is entered into FinCEN’s searchable database, so law enforcement can pull information or run inquires to aid investigations into financial and other illicit crimes. That’s why SARs are crucial. The law enforcement agencies are your audience and they need to know the whole “story” since they were not actively involved in the […]
Avoid Regulation DD Pitfalls When Disclosing Introductory Rates
Retail bankers have to confront a robust stock market, aggressive deposit acquisition strategies from growing firms, and maybe more than three Fed rate increases coming in 2018. Increasingly more creative methods are being used to attract deposit dollars. One such method is offering higher introductory rate products to catch attention while still holding down the […]
Combating Elder Financial Exploitation
On August 30, 2017, FinCEN issued a memorandum titled “Memorandum on Financial Institution and Law Enforcement Efforts to Combat Elder Financial Exploitation.” Elder Financial Exploitation is the improper use of an older person’s funds or assets. Assets can also include the older person’s property or belongings. When an older person is being exploited, it often […]
What is the Cloud?
It’s not atmospheric, but the term is banner‐like: sky-borne and all powerful. Before we can discuss the hot topic of shared multi-tenant environment risk in our next article, we need to take a step back and address, “What is Cloud Computing?” Sure, the cloud is out there, somewhere in the unknown, or most likely hidden […]
Last‐minute 2018 HMDA Clarifications
The long-awaited deadline to begin collecting 2018 HMDA data is here! Banking agencies have issued HMDA guidelines on data testing and additional information on HMDA data collection. Also, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has clarified some interpretations as it has worked through numerous questions via phone calls and emails from filers. One of the […]
Never Too Much BSA Training
With new leadership at the CFPB, OCC and FDIC, one may put training expenditures on the back burner thinking regulatory relief may make training not an every‐year mandate. Until you see relief in a regulation or rule change, don’t make any assumptions because training exceptions are BSA Pillar violations. Remember, a pillar violation can trigger […]