News

PHILADELPHIA - After unanimously passing a bill in April that placed tough restrictions on subprime loans, the Pennsylvania state legislature did an about-face and passed a bill overturning Philadelphia's anti-predatory lending regulation. Specifically, the new law-H.B. 1703-pertains to loans with rates 4.5 percentage points above Treasury securities of comparable maturity....

WASHINGTON - The National Association of Realtors and its members are still pushing for additional congressional hearings to be held on a controversial rule proposed by the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury that would allow banks to offer real estate brokerage services. NAR and individual realtors began lobbying Congress in...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The state of California has mandated that credit scores be disclosed to applicants effective with new credit report requests made on or after July 1, 2001. The disclosure explains consumer rights in regard to credit scores. It gives general information about scores including agency contact information. The...

WASHINGTON - Stating that NCUA's proposed rule to relax certain provisions in the agency's regulations concerning advertising and posting notice of nondiscrimination in real estate-related lending will bring the rule "more in line with the nondiscrimination advertising rules of other regulators," CUNA congratulated the NCUA Board for giving FCUs a...

WASHINGTON - Despite lowered interest rates, home purchase loans and refinances decreased 7.8% for the week ended June 15, compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association of America's weekly survey. The MBA Purchase Index decreased to 324.2 from 342.9 from the previous week, while the Refinance...

Freddie Mac has the program - "Don't Borrow Trouble," and it has the message for consumers - "call a 1-800 number for local government and non-profit agencies to help them understand and resolve specific lending problems." Now it needs a messenger. That's where credit unions and leagues come in. The...

SAN FRANCISCO, ANAHEIM and CHATSWORTH, Calif. - When it comes to being able to make member business loans, a credit union's looks can be deceiving. Take Patelco CU in San Francisco, for example. As the fourth largest credit union in California, it would be easy to assume the credit union...

There's a whole new set of systems, standards and hardware being used by more CU processors. Here's a look at some of them. * OFX - A uniform spec for exchanging financial data between financial institutions, consumers and other organizations over the Web. It was first created back in 1997...