Banks Face Thicket of Force-Placed Threats

A New York probe has brought national attention to banks' alleged self-dealing in the sale of force-placed insurance. But the investigation is just one of many looming challenges to the practice.

A coalition of state attorneys general is targeting force-placed insurance as part of a broader prospective mortgage-servicing settlement. Separately, proliferating class-action suits are churning out awkward-to-explain details of banks' business practices. And a Housing and Urban Development enforcement attorney who looked into alleged kickbacks paid to banks by insurers has landed at the newly empowered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"People are talking about force-placed, people are litigating it. It's become a topic," says Jeff Golant, a Southern Florida solo practitioner who began filing force-placed insurance suits in 2008. At the time, he and his mother, fellow attorney Margery Golant, were the only Florida lawyers pursuing such cases. He's since been drafted into a four-firm class action effort that includes 10 lawyers and extensive support staff.

Challenges to force placed insurance, in which banks buy insurance on behalf of uninsured borrowers and then tack the cost onto their mortgage debts, were virtually nonexistent two years ago. But allegations of kickbacks and a climate of distrust for mortgage servicers have already produced significant heat. American Banker first wrote about the subject in a 2010 story, "Ties to Insurers Could Land Mortgage Servicers in More Trouble."

How much money is at stake is unclear, though banks' cut of force-placed premiums are almost certainly worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Specialty property insurance division of Assurant Inc, one of the biggest purveyors of the product, reports around $2 billion in revenue a year.

While banks may eventually beat back the attacks on force-placed insurance, the issue increasingly looks like the venue for a significant legal fight. Government investigations are currently the most direct threat, given their expansive ability to demand records and the potential of regulatory remedies. A prospective national mortgage-servicing settlement made public last year sought to limit banks' ability to collect commissions on force-placed policies, and the offices of two state attorneys general involved in the ongoing settlement talks say force-placed insurance is still on the table.

There is also a possibility for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to wade into force-placed insurance. Last summer, the Department of Housing and Urban Development transferred its authority to enforce the Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act to the CFPB, along with much of its enforcement staff. Among those who jumped to the new agency was Anthony Romano, an attorney who in his former job had contacted Jeff Golant about a possible force-placed insurance investigation.

Neither Romano nor the CFPB responded to a request for comment regarding whether the agency might be looking at force-placed products. But Edward Mills, a Washington policy analyst for FBR Capital Markets, says force-placed is an obvious candidate for a bureau investigation. Such a review could be undertaken quickly in coordination with state enforcement officials, potentially allowing the fledgling agency to produce quick results.

"The bureau is going to be looking at things they can do which will benefit the average American, and obviously one of the concerns in DC is the practices of servicers during the foreclosure process," he says. "In many ways it's just a natural progression."

While private litigation is generally a slower process than government reviews, class action attorneys have had a head start. Minneapolis-based Nichols Kaster filed the first against JPMorgan Chase & Co. in early 2010, alleging that the company had forced home-equity borrowers to obtain excessive amounts of flood insurance.