A.M. Best Rates Investors Title's Strength as A (Excellent)

A.M. Best has assigned a financial strength rating of A (Excellent) to Investors Title Insurance Company and National Investors Title Insurance Company, designating both underwriters as companies with "excellent ability to meet their ongoing insurance obligations." Investors Title is proud to have earned this recognition.

"The strength of our financial position is the result of

an unwavering focus on profitable growth and 40 plus

years of hard work and financial stewardship."

- W. Morris Fine

President & Chief Operating Officer

Investors Title Insurance Company

by Andy Greenawalt, from American Banker 

Conventional wisdom holds that community banks are doomed because of rising regulatory, technological and staffing costs. When Guernsey Bancorp, a small Westerville, Ohio institution, recently sold to First Financial Bancorp in Cincinnati, Guernsey's chief executive offered the merger as proof of this theory.

"The $125 million bank franchise is dead," the bank's CEO said. "Unless you're a small bank and the only bank in a relatively small town, you won't survive today."

But according to publicly available data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the outlook for small community banks appears to be shockingly good. I pulled data from 2013 on community banks with assets between $100 million and $130 million and compared their return on assets and return on equity. Two things stood out to me when I graphed the results.

For one, a bank's level of assets appeared to have no impact on its ROA and ROE. Continue reading ....  

"Small banks that modernize and adapt will become champions of change. Those that don't will become victims of it."

Andy Greenawalt is co-founder and chief executive of Continuity Control, a provider of compliance management systems for community financial institutions.

Compliance and Risk Management Options That Are Cost Effective

 Deliver More with Less

Community banks are working harder than ever to serve their growing customer base with quality and efficiency.  Quality dictates fast, reliable service based on the needs of the customer.  These services increasingly include the use of mobile and online channels which increase a customer's convenience but adds more risk to the community bank.  A community bank must provide more products and services to a growing customer base without growing their costs at the same pace.  Call it "delivering more with proportionally less".

While the "do more with less" thinking is more often used as a management slogan, there are concrete ways to deliver more with less. First, you can deploy your current technologies more effectively and efficiently; second you can leverage current resources and skills across your compliance and investigation teams or external providers to share information and effort more efficiently.

Cost Challenges and Convergence

Mounting regulatory requirements and risk management requirements can overtax a community bank  to the point where hard trade-offs between quality of service or cost efficiency must be made. Continue reading... 

2014 Virginia Legislation Affecting Real Estate Industry

by Mark D. Williamson, Edmund S. Pittmand and

During the 2014 session of the Virginia General Assembly, several bills of interest to the real estate industry were passed and subsequently signed by the governor. The laws become effective on July 1, 2014.

Below is a brief description of four bills of particular note. Please click here for more detail on each bill.

• SB116: This bill allows an attorney to record an affidavit to correct an obvious description error contained in a recorded deed, deed of trust or mortgage.
•  HB1084: This bill provides that an applicant who is aggrieved by a locality's granting or denial of any approval or permit − where such grant included an unconstitutional condition or the denial was based on one − will be entitled to an award of compensatory damages and may be awarded reasonable attorney fees and costs.
•  HB525: Under current law, every notice of assessment of real property must set forth (i) the new and prior appraised values of land and appraised value of improvements, and the assessed values of such if different from the appraised values; ....
•  HB763: This bill removes the requirement that a deed of trust trustee's office be located within the commonwealth and expressly permits limited liability companies, partnerships and other entities to act as trustees.

Click here for additional details on each bill. 

Phil Hall, National Mortgage Professional Magazine

Lawrence Summers has publicly defended his actions as President Obama's Director of the National Economic Council in stemming the economic tumult following the 2008 crash, but acknowledged that some decisions ultimately proved to be mistakes.

In an essay published online by the Financial Times, "Lawrence Summers on 'House of Debt,'" Summers responded to observations and criticisms in the new book House of Debt by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi to address how the Obama Administration responded to the nation's housing crisis after taking office in January 2009. Summers, who had also served as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration, called Mian and Sufi to task in explaining why the Administration did not push for "mortgage relief through either coercion or financial inducement" and cited five policy decisions to justify the administration's response.

"First, there was the risk of bringing down the system in an effort to save it," Summers wrote in his essay. "Banks had substantial mortgage holdings and especially large quantities of subordinated second mortgages and home equity lines of credit, which would have been wiped out if mortgage principal had been reduced in a way that respected the seniority of first mortgages.... keep reading 

Posted by ABA Regulatory Policy Staff, June 9, 2014 

The CFPB's proposal last month to introduce a limited "cure" provision to the Qualified Mortgage rule would "significantly improve" the rule, ABA said in a comment letter. It would help banks ensure compliance, manage liability, and thus offer consumers lower-cost loans, ABA added, "incentiviz[ing] robust post-consummation quality control and audit procedures in a way that benefits both lenders and borrowers."

The CFPB's proposal would allow a lender who intends to originate a QM but that later finds that points and fees exceeded the 3% cap to refund the excess within 120 days and maintain the legal protections afforded to QMs.

ABA urged the bureau to extend the time during which banks can cure errors to 180 days, as 120 days would be too tight a timeframe for banks - especially small community lenders - to review consummated mortgages without dramatically increasing their compliance costs. ABA also urged the bureau to eliminate the good-faith requirement, which it said is duplicative.

The bureau is also seeking comment on whether and how to provide an opportunity to cure or correct consummated loans that were originated as QMs in good faith but ended up exceeding QM's 43% debt-to-income ratio limit, and ABA intends to comment on this matter by July 9.

Read the letter. 

4 Housing Bills That Could Make Mortgage Lending Much Easier

Regulatory streamlining, QM, exemptions for small lenders go to floor 

by Trey Garrison, via Housingwire.com

Action on Capitol Hill May 22 saw the passage of three pieces of legislation that supporters in the finance industry say will facilitate mortgage lending.

The House Financial Services Committee approved the Mortgage Choice Act, which had passed by a voice vote earlier this month. The measure sponsored by Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) addresses compensation retained by a creditor or its affiliate due to participation in an affiliated business arrangement as defined under RESPA. Under it, such compensation would not be considered "points and fees" as defined under new federal ability-to-repay rules.

The panel also pushed through the Community Institution Mortgage Relief Act, introduced by Rep. Blain Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.).

The proposal would waive certain RESPA requirements for credit unions and other lenders with fewer than $10 billion in assets and also would exempt mortgage servicers with portfolios of fewer than 20,000 loans from certain servicing requirements under RESPA.Additionally, Rep. Andy Barr's (R-Ky.) Portfolio Lending and Mortgage Access Act received a green light. The bill would grant "qualified mortgage" status to mortgages held in portfolio.

Read the full article here. 

by John Carney and Justin Lahart for The Wall Street Journal

President Barack Obama's executive order Monday expanding student-debt relief is the latest sign policy makers recognize the serious economic burdens young adults face. But the modest change is unlikely to move the needle in ways that matter to investors.

Admiral McRaven saluting his alma mater, the University of Texas. (Image source: screengrab via YouTube)

excerpted from {LIFE}BUZZ

At their commencement University of Texas students were treated to a speaker who knows a thing or two about fighting through adversity: a U.S. Navy SEAL.

Admiral William McRaven, a UT grad who served with SEAL Team 3, delivered a powerful speech last weekend, laying out 10 life lessons for grads if they want "to change the world."

Of course, SEALs are an elite group built on tradition and some terms - "sugar cookies" and "circuses," for instance - that don't mean what the rest of us immediately assume.

To really absorb McRaven's advice, you probably need to watch the whole speech.

McRaven in his own words:

"If you want to change the world..."

1. "...start off by making your bed."

"The wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over," McRaven said. "If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another, and by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed."

2. "...find someone to help you paddle."

3. "...measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers."

McRaven told the grads of the "munchkin crew" in his SEAL training group. "The big men in the other boat crews would always make fun of the tiny little flippers the munchkins put on their tiny little feet prior to every swim," McRaven recalled. But he added that those munchkins "outpaddled, outran, and outswam all the other boat crews."

4. "...get over being a sugar cookie, and keep moving forward."

5. "...don't be afraid of the circuses."

6. "...sometimes you have to slide down the obstacles head-first."

7. "...don't back down from the sharks."

8. "...you must be your very best in the darkest moments."

9. "...start singing when you're up to your neck in mud."

In the mud flats between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, sometimes the blind hope inspired by song was the only thing that got the SEAL candidates through the pain, McRaven said.

10. "...don't ever, ever ring the bell."

During Hell Week, prospective SEALs are put through the ringer, tested to their physical and psychological limits and told they can "ring the bell" - an actual bell - to signal that they're voluntarily exiting the program.

McRaven's advice? "Never, ever give up."

Click here for to read the full speech.  Click here to watch the recorded video.