” The final rule implements the Dodd-Frank Act and clarifies the scope of the rule as follows:
• The final rule defines “a term of a transaction” as “any right or obligation of the parties to a credit transaction.” This means, for example, that a mortgage broker employee cannot receive compensation based on the interest rate of a loan or on the fact that the loan officer steered a consumer to purchase required title insurance from an affiliate of the broker, since the consumer is obligated to pay interest and the required title insurance in connection with the loan.
• To prevent evasion, the final rule prohibits compensation based on a “proxy” for a term of a transaction. The rule also further clarifies the definition of a proxy to focus on whether: (1) the factor consistently varies with a transaction term over a significant number of transactions; and (2) the loan originator has the ability, directly or indirectly, to add, drop, or change the factor in originating the transaction.
• To prevent evasion, the final rule generally prohibits loan originator compensation from being reduced to offset the cost of a change in transaction terms (often called a “pricing concession”). However, the final rule allows loan originators to reduce their compensation to defray certain unexpected increases in estimated settlement costs.
• To prevent incentives to “up-charge” consumers on their loans, the final rule generally prohibits loan originator compensation based upon the profitability of a transaction or a pool of transactions. However, the final rule clarifies the application of this prohibition to various kinds of retirement and profit-sharing plans. For example, mortgage-related business profits can be used to make contributions to certain tax-advantaged retirement plans, such as a 401(k) plan, and to make bonuses and contributions to other plans that do not exceed ten percent of the individual loan originator’s total compensation.”
also
“Regulation Z already provides that where a loan originator receives compensation directly from a consumer in connection with a mortgage loan, no loan originator may receive compensation from another person in connection with the same transaction. The Dodd-Frank Act codifies this prohibition, which was designed to address consumer confusion over mortgage broker loyalties where the brokers were receiving payments both from the consumer and the creditor. The final rule implements this restriction but provides an exception to allow mortgage brokers to pay their employees or contractors commissions, although the commissions cannot be based on the terms of the loans that they originate.”
The rules will take effect in January 2014, except for the prohibition on mandatory arbitration and on the financing of credit insurance which will take effect in June 2013
A summary of the rule can be read here:
http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201301_cfpb_loan-originator-compensation-rule_summary.pdf
Title Tracks: News From The World Of Title Insurance 