CFPB Proposes Amendments to New Final Ability-to-Repay Rule, Solicits Comment on Calculating Loan Originator Compensation

On January 10, 2013, the CFPB issued its final ability-to-repay rule (Rule), which implements Dodd-Frank mortgage reforms requiring creditors to make a reasonable and good faith determination that a consumer will have a reasonable ability to repay the loan according to its terms. Failure to comply with these requirements may give rise to various damages under TILA, and consumers also may assert an ability-to-repay violation as a defense to a foreclosure action. There is no time limit on the use of this defense (although there is a cap on the recoupment or setoff of finance charge and fees), which applies against assignees of the loan in addition to the original creditor.

Loans that meet the criteria to be a “qualified mortgage” (“QM”) are entitled to either safe harbor or a rebuttable presumption of compliance with the ability-to-repay requirements.

Qualified mortgage criteria prohibit certain risky features and practices such as negative amortization. A loan also cannot be a QM unless the consumer has a total debt-to-income ratio of less than or equal to 43 percent (although the CFPB has provided a temporary QM definition softening the debt-to-income ratio). In addition, the transaction’s total “points and fees,” cannot exceed specified thresholds.  For a loan of $100,000 or more, the QM threshold is 3% of the total loan amount. 

Many in the industry are currently examining the loans they make loans to assess what percentage are expected to exceed the 3% threshold when the Rule becomes effective on January 10, 2014.  The element of loan originator compensation remains an important — and unresolved — factor in this analysis.

Loan originator compensation as an element of “points and fees”

Under the Ability-to-Repay Rule, points and fees includes, among other things, all compensation paid directly or indirectly by a consumer or creditor to a loan originator that can be attributed to that transaction at the time the interest rate is set.” A “loan originator” includes mortgage broker firms and individual employees hired by either brokers or creditors, but generally excludes creditors themselves. 

Before the CFPB issued the final Rule, many in the industry commented that including all loan originator compensation in points and fees makes little sense. Commenters pointed out that as a practical matter, compensation paid to individual employee originators is already included in the cost of the loan in the form of origination fees or as part of the interest rate. Furthermore, including loan originator compensation in points and fees will often result in “double-counting.” For example, points and fees include mortgage broker fees, including fees paid directly to the broker or the lender for delivery to the broker. But also included is compensation paid to individual loan originators (i.e., loan officers who are employed by mortgage brokerage firms) to the extent their compensation can be attributed to the transaction at the time the interest rate is set. Similarly, money collected by a creditor in up-front charges from consumers (which is already counted toward the points and fees thresholds as items in the finance charge) would be counted a second time as loan originator compensation if the creditor passed it on to its employee loan officer.

The CFPB proposes amendments on this issue

The CFPB is still considering exactly how it should require the inclusion of loan originator compensation under the Ability-to-Repay Rule. The agency has expressed its belief that Congress did intend the Dodd-Frank statute to literally require that loan originator compensation be treated as “additive” to the other elements of points and fees. Nonetheless, the CFPB is not convinced that “an automatic literal reading of the statute in all cases would be in the best interest of either consumers or industry…”  In particular, the CFPB does not believe that it is necessary or appropriate to count the same payment between a consumer and a mortgage broker firm twice, simply because it is both part of the finance charge and loan originator compensation. 

Therefore, concurrent with the final Ability-to-Repay Rule, the CFPB issued proposed amendments to the Rule that would provide that loan originator compensation is not necessarily always counted against the QM points and fees threshold if it is already counted elsewhere in points and fees.

• The CFPB proposes a new comment that would provide that mortgage broker fees already included in the points and fees as items included in the finance charge need not be counted again as loan originator compensation. 
• Another proposed comment would clarify that compensation paid by a mortgage broker to its individual loan originator employee is not loan originator compensation.
• With regard to the creditor context, the CFPB has proposed two alternatives. 
  • The first alternative would enshrine double-counting by creditors, specifying that a creditor must include compensation paid by a consumer or creditor to a loan originator in points and fees in addition to any fees or charges paid by the consumer to the creditor.  
  • Under the second alternative, the CFPB would permit all consumer payments of up-front fees and points to offset creditor payments to the loan originator. This alternative would provide that a creditor should reduce the amount of loan originator compensation included in the points and fees calculation by any amount paid by the consumer to the creditor and included in the points and fees calculation as part of the finance charge. For example, if the consumer paid a creditor a $3,000 origination fee and creditor paid the loan originator $1,500 in compensation attributed to the transaction, points and fees would include the $3,000 origination fee but not the $1,500 in loan originator compensation. However, if the consumer paid the creditor a $1,000 origination fee and the creditor paid the loan originator $1,500 in compensation, then the points and fees would include the $1,000 origination fee as well as $500 of the loan originator compensation.

Comments on these important issues are due by February 25, 2013. A link for submitting comments to the CFPB may be found here.