Industries

WASHINGTON — Key Democratic lawmakers are urging the Department of Housing and Urban Development to tighten its program for selling nonperforming guaranteed loans to ensure servicers have exhausted all loss mitigation options before the loans are sold to private investors.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is reducing the mortgage insurance premiums it charges on Federal Housing Administration multifamily loans to encourage the renovation of affordable housing units and promote energy-efficient upgrades.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group took a surprise 3.6 billion-pound ($5.2 billion) hit to the value of its assets and set aside more money for past misconduct, limiting Chief Executive Officer Ross McEwan's ability to return capital to shareholders.

In the absence of congressional action on housing finance reform, here is what the Federal Housing Finance Agency should do sooner rather than later.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency may face legislation or a lawsuit in the near future as it tries to force captive insurance companies to exit the Federal Home Loan Bank System.

The Current Expected Loss Credit model will help to quantify bankers' intuition and can be built with readily available data.

In one corner are groups like the Community Home Lenders Association and the major credit union groups, which are hoping the administration will further cut premiums after a reduction a year ago. In the other are the MBA and the ICBA, which argue a cut now would be too soon.

Executives of Wells Fargo, especially CEO John Stumpf, have repeatedly insisted that the economy (and their bank) will be fine despite the collapse in oil prices. But now they are acknowledging efforts to think about what happens if they are wrong.

The reverse mortgage industry is optimistic after recent reforms to the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage by the FHA and newfound respect from financial planners.

Financial services issues that helped define a presidency were largely absent from Tuesday's State of the Union address, including the crucial policy items that have not yet been resolved.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has rejected a nonprofit housing group's allegations of racial discrimination against U.S. Bank. HUD found that the bank properly maintain foreclosed homes in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods and in some cases spent more rehabilitating the homes than in white areas.

Community bankers and credit unions scored a significant victory while others in the mortgage industry lost out in the Federal Housing Finance Agency's final rule establishing membership standards for the Home Loan banks.

The agency scrapped a part of its 2014 proposal that would have required Home Loan bank members to maintain a certain percentage of residential mortgage assets in order to keep their membership. But it held fast on a provision that would disqualify captive insurance firms from membership.

But the strong demand for tax credits from those projects is also whittling down the investment returns as their riskiness declines, according to a new report by the New York-based accounting firm CohnReznick.

A recent tax change will provide more stability to banks and developers that use the low-income housing tax credit program, and the supply of below-market-rate apartments should increase as a result. But it's not enough to create the economic incentives needed to meet skyrocketing demand for affordable housing in the U.S.

Some lenders have asked whether the bureau would adjust its so-called resubmission guidelines — which determine whether lenders have to refile data based on errors found in samples — and it has responded with a request for further industry input.

The Federal Reserve's interest rate increase has commercial real estate debt and equity financing players even more upbeat about their prospects in 2016.

Consumer credit is better than ever before, even as Americans households have started levering up. But the big question for banks looking to re-commit to consumer lending is how.

Banks can help ease a severe national shortage in affordable rental properties — and make money doing it.

Officials who assess how well banks lend and invest in their communities seem out of sync with the experiences of Main Street.