loanDepot & Brookfield Residential launch BRP Home Mortgage
loanDepot, one of the nation’s largest retail mortgage lenders, and North American land developer and homebuilder Brookfield Residential Properties Inc., have launched BRP Home Mortgage, a new joint venture designed to streamline the mortgage experience for Brookfield Residential homebuyers.
Initially, the joint venture plans to serve new home construction communities located in California, Colorado, Delaware, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
“We look forward to the opportunity to provide Brookfield Residential customers with a seamless borrowing experience and could not be more excited to partner with their home builder team,” said Dan Peña, executive vice president of national joint ventures for loanDepot.
The new partnership with Brookfield Residential reportedly aligns with loanDepot’s focus on creating a mortgage experience that meets the expectations of Brookfield Residential homebuyers, who will have access to loanDepot’s proprietary mortgage originations platform.
“Brookfield Residential customers will definitely benefit from our customer-centric mortgage approach and the wide variety of loan products we have to offer,” said Kelly Crowther, who will serve as president of the newly formed BRP Home Mortgage joint venture.
Brookfield Residential investment strategy in markets is for the longer term, building new communities and homes, the company explained in a statement. The BRP Home Mortgage joint venture partnership will leverage the strength of the loanDepot platform to deliver the digital lending technology that makes the home buying process easy for customers.
By bringing loanDepot’s cutting edge, mortgage technology and tools to our customers, will further enhance our customers’ home buying experience, said Ted McKibbin, a divisional chief operating officer of Brookfield Residential, U.S. Land & Housing business.
Report: More banking & ID security regs coming in 2021
OneSpan, a remote banking, security technology provider, has released its inaugural OneSpan Global Financial Regulations Report, which focuses on how global fraud prevention regulations and legislation affect financial service providers.
The report examines a wide range of initiatives and predicts more remote banking security regulations are coming in 2021 for various aspects of digital transactions such as digital identity and e-signature verification, Open Banking and biometric authentication “aimed at enabling secure, digital economies.”
Governments around the globe have enacted laws and policies to enable and protect digital financial transactions and other remote activities essential in a COVID-19 pandemic environment, the report notes. This flood of en masse digitization also has “exposed shortcomings in the current security, data management and privacy policies of financial institutions.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic has presented financial institutions with major economic and operational challenges and accelerated the need for digital transformation at the same time as the industry grapples with an increasingly complex global regulatory environment,” said Scott Clements, OneSpan CEO.
The race to digitize industries (such as real estate finance and fully automated mortgage transactions), keep pace with evolving customer expectations, and remain competitive, also is “bringing unique regulatory requirements for financial institutions.”
The report’s highlights include guidance on several trends:
- Artificial Intelligence is under increasing scrutiny as adoption grows – Regulators and governments worldwide are struggling to develop and apply AI-powered frameworks that focus on data protection and privacy, but also abide to ethical and transparent use of the data.
- Open Banking is growing rapidly – As banks increasingly work with third-party providers who are allowed to use banking information to help consumers, the Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) issued the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on consumer authorized access to financial data, “which could be the catalyst for Open Banking in America, the report notes.
- Digital identities and remote bank account openings are gaining traction worldwide in 2020 – This trend indicates that even traditional face-to-face meetings in the branch are increasingly going digital and touchless.
- Facial recognition technology is driving the greatest changes to banking regulations – Organizations such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance are developing frameworks that would stipulate how customers’ biometric data should be stored and protected.
- Regulation is on the way for cryptocurrencies – As digital banking platforms have experienced massive growth, many governments and industry regulators bodies worldwide have started to look at what they might add to the financial sector.
ReverseVision supports HECM lenders’ transition to CMT Index
Reverse mortgage fintech ReverseVision recently completed updating all documents that reference an index to support both the Constant Maturity Treasury (CMT) and the London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR) indexes – as a way to assist lenders in complying with certain Ginnie Mae requirements.
The updated documents support HECM lenders as they transition from LIBOR to the CMT index facilitating index migration, the company explained in a statement, it specifically responds to Ginnie Mae’s All Participant Memorandum (APM) 20-12 rule.
APM 20-12 deems LIBOR-based, adjustable rate Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) loans not securitized on or after January 1, 2021, “as ineligible for pooling regardless of their origination or FHA case number assignment date.”
Since the LIBOR index should retire at the end of 2021, only adjustable rate HECMs that rely on the CMT index will be eligible for securitization pooling without restriction.
“ReverseVision had existing legacy support for CMT-based rate calculations built into the platform because it was the benchmark before LIBOR,” said Joe Langner, ReverseVision president. “Due to the renewed relevance of the CMT index, we have taken additional steps to ensure that lenders can seamlessly switch between it and LIBOR.”
The San Diego fintech reportedly conducted an extensive quality assurance inspection of all standard documents affected by an index change to ensure an easy transition from LIBOR to CMT for lenders.
Upon lender request all updates of custom and private reverse mortgage loan documents are delivered free of charge.
In anticipation of a future migration to the Secure Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) index ReverseVision has already enhanced its products, document language and reference points, according to Langner.
Amilda is a journalist and branding consultant interested in how entrepreneurs turn brilliant ideas into products and services that advance business acumen and improve people’s lives in unprecedented ways. She has covered mortgage finance for over 15 years.
