Given the fact that the residential real estate mortgage lending business is the most highly regulated industry in America, it’s no surprise to me when I hear students tell me “I never heard of that” or “Gee, I didn’t even know that!” – it’s seriously tough to keep up with all of it, believe me I’m the first to admit it!
We’re regulated far and wide my many different sections of the Federal Government, not to mention scores of individual State laws too. Most I have spoken with have heard of RESPA or The Truth in Lending Law & Reg Z – even though many of them, don’t necessarily know what you can and cannot do, as it relates to only these two statutes.
For example we’ve got those, the Real Estate Procedures Act (RESPA) enforced by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; the Truth-in-Lending Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, each enforced by the Federal Trade Commission; Gramm Leach Bliley Financial Modernization Act of 1999 – Privacy Statement (The GLB Act), Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, Equal Housing Opportunity, Fair Lending Notice Housing Discrimination Act 1977, FACT, and various individual State laws and regulations applicable to mortgage lending activities such as Treasury, IRS, Federal Reserve Board, FASB, EEOC, Federal Wage & Hour Act, Health & Safety code regulations etc. – and of course State & Federal civil and criminal statutes as well. Do ya think everybody who reads this, knows all of those?
Let me please give you just one illustration about the widely known GLB Act. Regardless of the depth of interest you may have, in regularly reading several industry publications, in the national news this last year we have all seen story after story about consumer Privacy issues. Industry people misplacing laptop computers contain thousand of data, etc. In this day and age, there are thousands of mortgage loan originators who work from their home office (a huge mistake on my opinion), the GLB Statute is intensely invasive on what is or is not permitted in your own home (as it relates to consumer privacy). Like the logical requirement to
‘lock rooms and file cabinets where records are kept’ but what about this –
‘encrypting sensitive customer information when it is transmitted electronically via public networks, and controlling access to sensitive information by requiring employees to use “strong” passwords ….’ Let me please translate some of those last few thoughts. Whenever you send an e-mail to a potential mortgage loan customer, it must be password protected (with a minimum 8 character password – letters & and numbers) any time it contains any personal information, to include (but not limited to) even only their name or address. Ordinary e-mails are a no-no.
I can promise you 99.9% of the last 100 people I explained that to (and understand please our average length in the industry of our typical student is 9 years on the job) that’s virtually everyone, they thought I was nuts! … some days it seems like there’s a rule or a regulation for everything, huh?
... and you think it's mostly about closing 'sales' and making bank deposits with your big fat commisison checks, huh? hahahahhaha 
