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New Mortgage Statement to eliminate confusion?

Classify this under Government solution without a problem.

Under the 2010 Frank – Dodd Financial Reform Act came a lot of mandated changes that won’t fix anything, but created a lot of extra paperwork and bottlenecks for the housing and mortgage industry. One of those items was the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

I just read that the CFPB is out to make reading your monthly mortgage statement easier!  Was this really a problem? I’ve had plenty of mortgage loans from all sorts of different servicers, and I’ve never been confused.

According to many consumer protection group, confusing monthly statements has been a huge contributor to the current housing mess.  Huh??  I’m not fan of the large banks, but is this really a problem the government should be mandating?

The CFPB is apparently required under the 2010 law to put new mortgage servicing rules in place to help consumers. The law has specific requirements for mortgage statements, including a phone number and email address for the customer to get information about the loan, as well as information about housing counselors.

The newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has finally developed a proposed new one page “standardized” monthly mortgage statement supposedly designed to provide clear information about your loan.

The prototype released Monday included a breakdown of how much of the monthly payment went to principal, interest and escrow. The form also detailed the outstanding principal, maturity date, prepayment penalty and, for adjustable-rate mortgages, the time when the interest rate could change.

Many servicers already provide such information on monthly statements, but there are no industrywide standards.  Initial reaction from servicers to the agency’s proposal was positive.

You can see a working draft of the standardized statement on its website, www.ConsumerFinance.gov, and give  input before a version of the form formally is proposed this summer.

WE EMPLOY PEOPLE TO DO THIS?  This is what is wrong with this country!

What do yo think?