The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued policy guidance on early compliance with the 2016 Mortgage Servicing Final Rule.
Originally
issued in August 2016, changes from the rule go live either on Oct. 19, 2017, or April 19, 2018. Both dates are Thursdays.
But servicers have voiced operational challenges from a mid-week change and called on the bureau to move the change dates to the weekend.
“The bureau understands that, for many servicers, the Thursday effective dates could afford less than a full day — from the close of business overnight on each of the preceding Wednesdays — to update and test systems in order to be compliant with the 2016 amendments,” a public filing Friday from the CFPB said. “If servicers do not have sufficient time to complete these tasks, their systems may be more likely to produce errors, which could expose servicers and consumers to risk.”
Moving the implementation to the weekend would provide sufficient time to test compliance.
Feedback received by the regulator indicate that early compliance with an implementation on the Monday preceding the current implementation dates would address concerns posed by a midweek transition.
The CFPB said it understands the industry’s concerns and issued its policy guidance on supervisory and enforcement priorities — a non-binding general statement of policy articulating considerations relevant to the agency’s exercise of its supervisory and enforcement authority.
“The bureau does not, therefore, intend to take supervisory or enforcement action for violations of existing Regulation X or Regulation Z resulting from a servicer’s compliance with the 2016 Mortgage Servicing Final Rule occurring up to three days before the applicable effective dates,” the notice stated.
