Mortgages

Data breaches have become scarily commonplace. But even small financial institutions can take action to thwart hackers and minimize losses.

Commerce Union Bancshares in Brentwood, Tenn., plans to close mortgage offices in Ohio, Illinois and Kentucky and to transfer the employees to Bridgeview Bank Group in Bridgeview, Ill.

Congress should consider giving direct authority over nonbank mortgage servicers to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office. The report said there should be "parity" among financial regulators in the oversight of regulated entities and third parties they do business with.

Goldman Sachs will pay $5.1 billion to settle a U.S. probe into its handling of mortgage-backed securities involving allegations that loans weren't properly vetted before being sold to investors as high-quality bonds.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's experiments with selling credit risk to investors are a critical element of new plan to merge the two entities and move them out of conservatorship, but what form so-called credit risk transfers take could make a big difference.

The housing market has been improving but mortgage credit remains "stubbornly" tight on loans bought by the government-sponsored enterprises, according to a chief housing adviser at the White House.

According to the American Bankers Association's quarterly report on consumer delinquency trends, late payments on home-equity loans and home-equity lines of credit have dipped below 15-year averages for the first time since the Great Recession.

The majority of first-time homebuyers plan to skip the starter-home step and move straight into the home that would meet their long-term needs, according to the Homebuyer Insights Report from Bank of America.

GOP lawmakers and witnesses at a Senate Banking Committee hearing pointedly criticized the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday, setting the stage for a likely contentious hearing with the agency's director later in the week.

Third Federal Savings and Loan in Cleveland has long offered mortgage refinancing in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Now it plans to offer purchase loans in those states.