Almost 75% of mortgage industry executives told a Washingtonmortgage think tank that CFPB regulations cause their firms themost compliance anxiety.

The executives participated in The Collingwood Group’s monthly survey of leading industryexecutives and released in a monthly Mortgage Industry OutlookReport.

Many of the respondents told the firm they felt the agency’srules were too focused on “fault finding” and levying fines, andless focused on actually helping borrowers. The firm quoted oneexecutive as saying, “I think all the regulations combined haveunintended consequences.” Another questioned, “how do you model therisk and severity of a class-action lawsuit for a complianceviolation, when all parties acted in good faith, and the issue wasan unintentional oversight?”

Other respondents said there wasn’t one specific CFBP rule thatwas causing problems, but rather the volume of regulatory changesthat made compliance difficult.

Among their concerns were constant changes to, orreinterpretations of, the rules. Executives observed that frequentchanges kept them continually off-balance and trying to catch up.Waves of new rules meant the firms have to recreate processescontinually, the respondents said.

Respondents also observed that too many of the agency’s rulesare too vague and not prescriptive enough, making it more difficultfor firms to be sure when they were in compliance. Multiple andoften conflicting requirements among regulatory agencies intensifythat effect, executives said. And, regulatory burdenincreases the cost of mortgage lending for the firms andsubsequently for consumers, the executives said.

The respondents said their business prospects would be unchangedover the next six months, with 34% saying they expected theirbusiness to be “a little better” and 22% expecting it to be “alittle worse.” The firm commented on how few of the executivesappeared to think a Republican victory in mid-term elections wouldnecessarily improve their regulatory environment.

Collingwood reported 185 executives participated in the survey,but reported that 69% of respondents either made mortgage loans orserviced them.