Compliance Blog

Posted by Anthony Demangone

I'm back in the saddle at NAFCU after a fantastic week at our compliance school.  If you want to see what 180 enthused credit union compliance officers look like, well, it looks like this:

I think one attendee summed the week up well in a brief exchange with me on Friday.  He thanked me and NAFCU for the event.  I said I was glad that he enjoyed it.

"Oh, I didn't enjoy it. It was a great event and I learned a ton.  But I wouldn't call it enjoyable!" 

And I know exactly what he meant.  It was a wonderful week, but a very tough week.  

***

Now, back to the grind.  

Force-placed insurance.  Here's a fantastic post (Bank Lawyer's Blog) that discusses the AG proposed settlement regarding mortgage servicers and how it would affect force-placed insurance. In short, the settlement agreement would prohibit mortgage loan servicers from earning profit from force-placed insurance policies.  Under the proposal, mortgage servicers would be prohibited from force-placing insurance with an affiliate, and from accepting "kick-backs," referral fees or accepting anything of value related to the force-placement of insurance.  If you want the bloody details, just start reading on page 24.   My takeaway? Any income you receive from force-placed insurance related to mortgage servicing is now clearly subject to increased regulatory risk.  If the proposed AG agreement finds its way into the requirements of the secondary market, or on to the "to-do" list at the CFPB, the agreement may very well affect your bottom line. Stay tuned.

Board fiduciary duties and policies and procedures. Here's a thought that came up a few times at NAFCU's Compliance School.  I see a potential red flag in the following situation. NCUA has indicated that boards should be involved in the formation of many important credit union policies.  The board sets the credit union's appetite for risk, its limitations for concentration, etc.  When a policy is supposed to reflect a board position, how can that policy be written without their involvement at some level?  And how could a credit union adopt a policy created by a third party without having board involvement to tailor it to their credit union's operations? Credit union should consider how this might affect their board members, especially in relation to their duty of care. 

HSAs. Treasury has redesigned and reorganized its web page dedicated to Health Savings Accounts.