Government

The Collingwood Group announced Wednesday that it has retained Manoj K. Singh as a special advisor. In his new role, Dr. Singh will work with the Collingwood Group to help clients navigate the business opportunities that exist in Washington as a result of the housing crisis. Dr. Singh was previously SVP of single-family pricing and securitization at Freddie Mac. He also held executive-level positions with Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Wasserstein Perella Capital Management.

Bank of America has agreed to participate in Keep Your Home California's principal reduction program, the California Housing Finance Agency announced Wednesday. Principal write-downs offered under the state-run program are part of a $2 billion, federally funded effort to help hard-hit families remain in their homes and ease the California foreclosure crisis. Bank of America has been engaged in a pilot of the principal reduction program since February, and is now moving into full participation.

Raj Date will replace Elizabeth Warren as special advisor to the secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) when Warren departs from the agency at the end of this month, Treasury said in a statement Tuesday. Warren is returning to her position as the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Fannie Mae has issued a notice to servicers alerting them of a change in the effective date for new delinquency management and default prevention standards. According to the bulletin, Fannie is pushing the date by which servicers must implement the new requirements out by a month to October 1, 2011. The revised rules are part of the directive issued by the company's regulator in late April to bring both Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's procedures for handling past-due mortgages in line with one another.

Freddie Mac announced its new Servicing Success Program Monday. The program features two major components - the Servicer Success Scorecard and the Servicer Success File Reviews - both designed to further the GSE's efforts to track and recognize ""servicing excellence."" The scorecard delineates new expectations based on investor reporting and remitting default management. The second piece of the program, the file reviews, will identify potential challenges with servicers' loss-mitigation actions.

Several state attorneys general are voicing objections to the proposed settlement with the nation's top mortgage servicers. Connecticut AG George Jepsen has requested meetings with four of the largest lenders to discuss their mortgage servicing practices, raising concerns about complaints consumers have made to his office and state officials. Several other state counsels have also launched their own investigations and worry that an overarching liability release could prove problematic for their cases.

State and federal regulators closed the doors on three lending institutions over the weekend -- LandMark Bank of Florida, Southshore Community Bank also in Florida, and Bank of Choice out of Colorado. This latest round of closings brings the number of lenders on the FDIC's failed-bank list to 58 for the year. Together, the three seizures are expected to cost the federal agency $256 million.

HUD and NeighborWorks have extended the deadline for homeowners who have experienced a loss of income to apply for the Emergency Homeowners' Loan Program (EHLP). The new deadline is Wednesday, July 27. The cut-off date had originally been set for Friday, July 22. EHLP assists homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure due to involuntary unemployment or underemployment as a result of the economy or a medical condition. Qualifying homeowners are awarded an interest free loan to pay a portion of their monthly mortgage for up to two years.

Treasury is currently reviewing a proposal to aid distressed homeowners by allowing a short sale of mortgage notes from mortgage-backed securities (MBS) trusts to new investors. The proposal was put forth by American Home Mortgage Servicing. The company says this strategy could be key to unlocking principal reduction modifications, which could save hundreds of thousands of homes from foreclosure and reduce losses for both investors and underwater borrowers.

Wells Fargo & Company has reached an agreement with the Federal Reserve that resolves allegations that its former Wells Fargo Financial unit, which was closed in July 2010, did not adequately detect and prevent instances of fraudulent loan applications and that the unit's employees steered prime borrowers into more costly subprime loans. The Fed has assessed an $85 million civil money penalty against Wells Fargo. In addition, the order requires the company to compensate affected borrowers.