One of the most important factors in a CRA exam is your assessment area. Your assessment area will dictate the performance standards you are measured against. Assessment areas can be optimized in a number of different ways, but there are 6 common mistakes you must avoid in order to pass your CRA exam and obtain a good rating.

In recent years we’ve seen the rise of websites & applications that can automatically verify employment & income for lenders across the country. These programs are integrated with an employer’s HR records, and allow lenders to obtain an instant snapshot of the employee’s details & earnings. These are great tools, that have helped slash precious time off of originations. However, while the reach of these companies is growing, automated verifications will never be able to capture the entirety of the market. Here’s why:

On February 12th, CFPB director Mick Mulvaney released his strategic plan for the next four years. The plan was composed of three main goals that outlined exactly how the CFPB would be conducting itself over the next four years.

With the new HMDA rules in effect and the new CFPB HMDA Platform now accepting 2017 submissions, growing pains and hiccups are to be expected. The CFPB recently said that it would not assess penalties for errors in data collected in 2018 and it recognized that there were significant operational challenges needed to meet the requirements under the rule.

On January 23, 2018, CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney sent out a memo to all staff at the CFPB that redefined the mission and purpose of the agency. That memo, which was leaked and published by ProPublica, stated that the CFPB would cease being a regulator that “pushed the envelope” through its enforcement actions and would instead serve everyone it works for.

We’ve come a long way since the 2008 financial crisis. The phenomena of NINJA and stated income loans has died off. The current state of mind for every mortgage investor is VERIFY, VERIFY, VERIFY! People want to know exactly what they’re invested in, and verifying income & assets is an extremely important part of that.

The short answer is everyone waits until the last minute to submit their files. For example, “In 2015, 21.5 million Americans or 1 in 7 filers waited until the last week before the deadline to file their tax returns,” according to the IRS. Historically (based on our volume of support calls) a large percentage of HMDA filers also wait to submit their HMDA data until the last two weeks of February.

Whether you are a large bank with assets of $1 billion or a small bank, your Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) story matters. All state member and nonmember banks, national banks, and saving associations that meet or exceed the asset size thresholds as defined by the FFIEC for both of the last two calendar years are subject to the data collection and reporting requirements of the Community Reinvestment Act. Even if you’re not a submitting bank, you still need to perform under the Act.

Although the new CFPB HMDA rules can seem complex to navigate, the submission process is relatively straightforward, especially if you already use QuestSoft software. The new CFPB HMDA platform was released in beta on November 3, 2017 and allows for institutions to create accounts and test their HMDA data for errors. In 2018, more than 3,000 institutions will submit their data to the CFPB using the new submission platform.

In the mortgage industry, there are countless different forms of fraud ranging from the seemingly innocent omissions, to large scale market manipulation. One of the more common forms of deceit, which may seem like just a white-lie, is occupancy fraud.