Mortgage servicers have no choice but to open their kimonos to Freddie Mac’s MHA Compliance (MHA-C) division. So when MHA-C offers to share its insights, as they did at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Servicing Conference last week in San Diego, there’s a rapt audience of servicers, most of whom are struggling to comply with HAMP programs.
Servicing Management magazine was there to capture the main points. The presenters were quick to acknowledge the difficulty of setting up and complying with the program. However, citing Sarbanes-Oxley as an appropriate benchmark for packaging HAMP modifications, the panel suggested that a lot of the loan packages they see seemed devoid of any due diligence or quality control.
So how do you deal with a constantly changing program that is known to be difficult to comply with but that has high documentation standards?
“The biggest takeaway I’d have for a servicer is to really understand the program, which is why I recommend having somebody in the organization who is the ‘internal expert,” says Vic O’Laughlen, vice president of servicer oversight for the division. This becomes more important as the programs morph and spin off programs are introduced (like Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA).)
As we all know, MHA is a work in progress. The question is, will it ultimately be a successful work?