With Congress back in Washington, community bankers must act now to urge lawmakers to temporarily extend FDIC Transaction Account Guarantee insurance, ICBA leaders wrote in a message to the industry. ICBA Chairman Jeff Gerhart and ICBA President and CEO Cam Fine wrote that Congress is quickly running out of time to advance an extension, so community bankers should call and write their members of Congress immediately.

“Congress will be hard-pressed to support a TAG extension unless they hear from you immediately!” Fine and Gerhart wrote. “Call and write your congressional delegation TODAY and urge them to extend full TAG coverage before they leave Washington.” Call Congress Today. Write Congress Now.

ICBA strongly opposes the use of eminent domain to seize residential mortgages so that they may be refinanced, the association wrote in a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The effort would only help a relatively small number of borrowers, but would have harmful consequences far beyond the communities using eminent domain, ICBA wrote.

In its letter to the FHFA, ICBA wrote that using eminent domain would make credit more difficult and expensive to obtain. The association also wrote that investors would be hurt by the declining value of mortgage-backed securities as mortgages are seized.

Several local governments have recently sought to use eminent domain to seize underwater mortgages so they may be refinanced. The FHFA requested comments on these proposals and has expressed significant concerns with them. Read ICBA Letter.

ICBA and a coalition of 15 other trade associations urged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to drop its proposal to revise the annual percentage rate calculation to include additional fees and charges. Citing CFPB consumer testing that showed that consumers confuse the APR with their note rate and do not use it to comparison shop for mortgage loan offers, the coalition said that the APR is of little value. The letter notes that the APR is embedded in other mortgage rules and that the bureau’s proposed RESPA-TILA rulemaking does not clarify how the reconfigured APR will impact those rules. 

Additionally, the coalition pointed out that this wholesale change of the APR is not required by statute and that the sheer impact of this change along with the many other proposed mortgage rulemakings will add confusion and cost to both the industry and consumers. Finally, because of the CFPB’s many proposed changes to Regulation Z, the coalition asked the bureau to publish a single version of the revised Reg Z so the industry to can better analyze impact the of these changes and provide better comments. Read Coalition Letter.

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