The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “CFPB” announced today they will delay “enforcement” of the new Truth In Lending-RESPA Integrated Disclosure “TRID” rule for an undefined period of time. Over two hundred members of Congress were pushing for an enforcement delay until December 31, 2015 but the CFPB did not place a definitive time frame for compliance thus leaving the date that CFPB enforcement starts very murky.
The CFPB also said they will apply a standard of “sensitivity” in their TRID enforcement oversight with companies who provide “good-faith efforts” to comply with TRID. However, the Bureau failed to define what “sensitivity” or “good-faith efforts” actually mean and how they will be applied.
The enforcement delay is certainly a good step because the CFPB clearly heard from the industry that a number software companies were unable to get their lending customers ready in time. The American Bankers Association recently conducted a study which said that 8 out of 10 bank members couldn’t verify when their software system would be ready or were informed their software system wouldn’t be ready before June. The Loan Originator System “LOS” troubles were discussed in a blog post we did in January.
Despite the CFPB’s decision to delay enforcement of TRID for an unspecified period of time, TRID still goes into full effect on August 1, 2015 and loans that are originated after August 1 will still be required to comply with TRID because the real regulators of this rule will expect complete compliance. The real regulators in this case are the secondary market investors, mortgage insurance companies, and the plaintiffs bar. TRID loans will still be subject to representations and warranties by lenders who sell their mortgages to the secondary market. Additionally, the TRID enforcement delay at this point only pertains to the CFPB not other state and governmental agencies who also have oversight over TRID compliance.
So the single most important message from today’s announcement by the CFPB is that nothing is really changing with TRID and that all companies need to ensure they are in compliance on August 1st. We hope this message does not get misinterpreted by the industry into thinking the CFPB has delayed the entire rule because it has not.