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DS News Webcast: Wednesday 11/19/2014

Foreclosure, REO, News, Webcast

Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Elijah Cummings sent letters on Tuesday to 16 financial institutions requesting detailed information regarding data breaches and seeking information about briefings from corporate IT officials, according to an announcement on Warren's web site. The letters were prompted by multiple press reports, notably a front page story in USA Today, stating that hackers have been attempting to breach firms' financial data as part of a broad cyber-attack campaign.

It is believed that the data breaches have caused more than 500 million records to be compromised. Institutions targeted by the letters included banks, investment firms, and other financial service providers, according to the announcement. Warren and Cummings requested from two of the institutions, Citigroup and U.S. Bank, information about how the data breaches "may have affected their administration of government purchase and charge cards under contracts with the General Services Administration."

Government-sponsored enterprise Freddie Mac has announced a set of new loss mitigation and foreclosure prevention guidelines and revisions that include a new deeds-in-lieu of foreclosure incentive, extended foreclosure timelines, and additional foreclosure relief for service members and their dependents. The new deeds-in-lieu incentive is scheduled to go into effect on February 1, 2015, while foreclosure timelines have been increased in 47 jurisdictions for all foreclosure sales completed on or after November 1, 2014.