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Mortgage Firms

Mortgage lenders, servicers, insurers, and service providers

Capitol FinLaw has deep roots in mortgage finance policy, with experience spanning origination, servicing, insurance, and securitization issues. Clients include mortgage lenders and servicers, mortgage and property insurers, service providers, credit reporting agencies, and industry trade associations.

Services we provide to mortgage clients include:

Regulation & Compliance

Consumer Compliance: We assist clients with compliance matters on a variety of federal banking and consumer financial services laws including TILA, RESPA, HMDA, FCRA, CRA, privacy, fair lending, compliance management, and UDAP/UDAAP.
Impact Analysis: We help clients understand the impact of existing and proposed laws and regulations on new or existing products and services.
Regulatory Inventory: We build and maintain comprehensive and special-purpose inventories of regulatory content and obligations.

Licensing & Transactions

Charter Options: We provide clients with strategic legal advice on charter, license, and operating model options, including charters for commercial banks, ILCs, national trust banks, and limited-purpose state banks, as well as money transmission and foreign bank licenses.
Due Diligence: We conduct regulatory due diligence on financial services acquisition and investment targets.
Product Advice: We assess new financial products and services, providing advice on regulatory requirements, licensing obligations, communication strategies, and product structure recommendations.
Regulatory Applications: We assist clients with applications related to specific initiatives and transactions, including applications for charters, conversions, acquisitions, and new activities.

Public Policy

Agency Challenges: We provide technical legal advice and strategic counsel to clients who are contemplating or pursuing challenges to agency actions.
Bill and Rule Analysis: We provide analysis of legislative proposals and regulatory rulemakings, as well as summaries and analysis of comments submitted by other stakeholders.
Comment Letters: We draft comment letters for clients on regulatory proposals and analyze the broader comment record to help clients understand where their position sits in the field.
Congressional Testimony: We prepare written and oral testimony for Congressional hearings on financial services law and regulation.
Executive Briefings: We prepare and deliver regulatory update briefings to client senior executives visiting Washington and help prepare them for meetings with regulators, congressional staff, and executive branch officials.
FOIA Requests: We submit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to federal agencies and follow up with demand letters to obtain regulatory documents and agency records.
Legislative Drafting: We draft bills, amendments, and legislative text to support clients' advocacy efforts relating to financial services regulation and policy.
Monitoring & Tracking: We perform tailored monitoring of regulatory developments and provide custom trackers, reports, and other data products.
Ongoing Advice: We provide ongoing regulatory advice through participation in regular conference calls and meetings, responding to questions as they arise during product development and operations.
White Papers: We produce policy white papers and analytical studies on financial services regulatory issues.
Consumer Credit Reporting ECOA FCRA Fair Housing Act HMDA Mortgage Lending Real Estate Lending & Appraisals Securitization & Credit Risk Retention TILA

Related

Analysis

Disparate Impact: States Pick Up the Baton to Combat Housing Discrimination

Aug. 3, 2026

In April 2025, President Trump issued an executive order (EO 14281) directing federal agencies to eliminate disparate-impact liability "to the maximum degree possible." In response to that EO, the OCC, FDIC, CFPB, and HUD have stepped away from disparate impact claims: The OCC and FDIC removed disparate impact from their fair-lending examination manuals. HUD proposed to remove its disparate impact rule found at 24 C.F.R. Part 100, and instead, rely on court interpretations of disparate impact. The CFPB finalized a rule amending Regulation B to remove the "effects test" or disparate impact...

Analysis

Key Implications if the CFPB Is No Longer Operational

Dec. 2, 2025

In a pending case brought by the union representing CFPB employees, the Administration has informed the court that CFPB will run out of funding early next year and that the Administration will not seek additional funding for the agency. This memorandum examines the implications for the CFPB’s key functions – rulewriting, supervision, enforcement, and publication of market data – should the agency cease operations in early 2026. The Dodd-Frank Act provides the CFPB with exclusive authority to prescribe rules implementing federal consumer financial laws. These laws include ECOA, EFTA, FDCPA,...

Analysis

The Unintended Consequences of Defunding the CFPB

Feb. 4, 2025

Under current law, the operations of the CFPB are funded by a transfer of “earnings” from the Federal Reserve System to the CFPB. Since the Federal Reserve System is operating at a loss due to rising interest rates and arguably has no earnings, the Administration has been urged to shut down the agency by executive order. (See Chopra is Out. Now Shutter the CFPB, by Hal Scott in the Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2025.) As discussed below, such an order would have some unintended effects on the application of federal consumer financial laws to banks and certain nonbanks. Executive orders...

Analysis

CFPB's Proposed Rule on Data Brokers Under the FCRA

Dec. 4, 2024

On December 3rd, the CFPB proposed a rule expanding the coverage of FCRA to data brokers, clarifying the definition of consumer report, limiting the use of credit header data, and expanding the consumer consent requirements to furnish a consumer report. Comments on the Proposed Rule are due March 3, 2025. With an expanded definition of “consumer report” and “consumer reporting agency” (“CRA”), particularly that a person selling any of four types of information about a consumer (credit history, credit score, debt payments, and income or financial tier) for any purpose generally would qualify...

Analysis

CFPB's Final Rule Creating a Registry of Nonbank Public Orders

June 10, 2024

On June 3, 2024, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB” or “Bureau”) published its final rule creating a registry (“Registry”) of nonbank covered persons subject to certain agency and court orders (“Final Rule”). The Final Rule is effective on September 16, 2024, but the implementation dates vary based on type of entity (as discussed below). In short, under the Final Rule, nonbank covered persons subject to certain final public orders obtained or issued by a government agency in connection with the offering or provision of a consumer financial product or service must report the...