The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program reported in its Q1 2015 Report to Congress that from the time Treasury began requiring servicers to report HAMP outcomes on December 1, 2009 through April 2015, 5.7 million homeowners applied for assistance through the program, according to Treasury's official HAMP database. About 4 million, or 70 percent, of those who applied for assistance through HAMP were turned down by servicers, according to SIGTARP.
Treasury responded to SIGTARP's report by pointing out that HAMP has directly helped more than 1.5 million homeowners permanently modify their mortgages and indirectly assisted millions more by setting new standards for the mortgage industry that have led to more affordable and sustainable private modifications. Treasury also said it has made consistent improvements to HAMP which have resulted in a steadily declining number of denied applications in the last three years.
With many institutions still designated as systemically important or too big to fail even seven years after the financial crisis, a subcommittee of the Senate Banking Committee convened for a hearing on Wednesday to discuss ways in which bankruptcy reform could end too big to fail and get taxpayers off the hook for keeping large financial institutions alive. One strategy suggested was a "single point of entry" strategy in which a bridge financial company is created and all the assets of the bank holding company would be transferred to the bridge FHC.