- 6/11/2025
On today’s episode, Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler talks with Bob Broeksmit, CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association, about the progress of the trigger lead bill in Congress as well as the deregulation of the mortgage industry under President Trump.
Related to this episode:
As trigger leads ban inches closer, MBA’s Broeksmit talks deregulation, conservatorship | HousingWire
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/mba-bob-broeksmit-the-gathering-2025-trigger-leads-gse-conservatorship/
The HousingWire Daily podcast brings the full picture of the most compelling stories in the housing market reported across HousingWire. Each morning, listen to editor in chief Sarah Wheeler talk to leading industry voices and get a deeper look behind the scenes of the top mortgage and real estate stories. Hosted and produced by the HousingWire Content Studi
Related to this episode:
As trigger leads ban inches closer, MBA’s Broeksmit talks deregulation, conservatorship | HousingWire
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/mba-bob-broeksmit-the-gathering-2025-trigger-leads-gse-conservatorship/
The HousingWire Daily podcast brings the full picture of the most compelling stories in the housing market reported across HousingWire. Each morning, listen to editor in chief Sarah Wheeler talk to leading industry voices and get a deeper look behind the scenes of the top mortgage and real estate stories. Hosted and produced by the HousingWire Content Studi
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NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome, everyone. My guest today is Bob Brokesmith, the president and CEO of the Mortgage
00:10Bankers Association. We are doing this live from the gathering event where he just got off the
00:16stage. And Bob, great session and great timing, as we talked about. So let's start off with the
00:22news of the day, which is about trigger leads. What did we find out today?
00:26Well, Sarah, it's very exciting. After so many years working this issue on behalf of our members
00:32and all the consumers they serve, the House Financial Services Committee this morning had
00:37a markup of the trigger leads bill. And that means that the committee gets to debate the bill and then
00:43vote on it and pass it out of committee, which is an important prerequisite to having floor
00:48consideration of the bill. And I'm delighted to report that Representative John Rose of Tennessee
00:54shepherded it through the process along with Richie Torres on the Democratic side from New York.
01:00And it passed by voice vote this morning, which means that the next step,
01:06excuse me, the next step is to get a full floor vote in the House. We're working carefully in
01:13the Senate, whereas you remember last session it passed by unanimous consent. And so we're achingly
01:19close to having this trigger leads bill get across the finish line.
01:22You guys have just done so much work on this. And to your point, we thought it was over the line
01:27before. Tell us why this is important. What does this trigger leads bill mean if people in our audience
01:33don't know? Sure. Well, this has been a thorn in the side of originators for years. And what happens
01:39is when a consumer works with a loan officer and then has credit pulled to assess their credit
01:46worthiness. The credit bureaus sell the lead because if a borrower is getting credit pulled
01:54for a mortgage, it's something that a lot of other mortgage lenders are interested in, right?
01:59Right. And so this loan officer has worked so carefully with the borrower to get to that point
02:04in the process, then has the borrower faced with as many as 200 texts, cell phone calls, emails,
02:14hounding that borrower, often in misleading ways or even misrepresenting themselves as the lender
02:22and ostensibly to give them a different offer of credit. And in fact, the law says you can only
02:30buy a trigger lead if you are able to make an offer of credit to the consumer. We find that that's not
02:37what happens. And to make it worse, the borrower presumes, because they've been working with the
02:43loan officer, that the loan officer sold the borrower's data without their permission. So they
02:49call the loan officer and say, why am I getting all these phone calls? You must have sold my lead when
02:55nothing could be further from the truth because why would the loan officer do that? So it's been a real
03:00problem for years. As you mentioned, we got close in the last session. We have a new turnover. French
03:07Hill, as chair of House Financial Services, has been very helpful in getting it to this point where
03:13all we need now is passage in the full House. It was a strong bipartisan vote. We had, this one is the
03:21thing that surprised me more than anything else. We had 39 of the 50 state attorneys general send a
03:29letter to the committee saying, you got to pass this thing. This is a bad thing for consumers. We
03:33got to fix it. So I bought a house about a year ago. And let me tell you, it was brutal when it came to
03:38that. Yeah, absolutely. And I knew exactly what was happening. But you're right. If you're just a
03:41consumer, you're like, why has my life gotten so much worse in the last 24 hours? Right. And, you know,
03:48I mean, the only person you've dealt with is the loan officer. So you assume that the loan officer is
03:53involved when the loan officer would love for you not to get all these. Right. That's in the not in
03:59their best interest. Right. Well, let's, you know, that's the news of the day. Tell us a little bit
04:03about what your other priorities are right now. Lots happening. Lots. I cannot imagine, Bob, do you get
04:08a lot of sleep? Well, I try to get seven hours. And it's not always serene and peaceful. But I do try
04:19to, if you read any wellness thing, and it says sleep is really important. So anyway, I do try to
04:25sleep. But it is a little restless from time to time. But yeah, so there's a lot going on in Washington.
04:32And one thing that I think is underreported, just because there's so much else going on,
04:37is all the deregulatory action that the administration is taking, whether it's at HUD,
04:43FHFA, CFPB, and the cumulative effect of easing up on this crushing overregulation that our members
04:52have had to contend with for years, is really going to pay dividends. It tends to get overshadowed by
04:57the sexier headlines of the day. But it's really, the cumulative effect is going to be quite something.
05:04So we're following all that very closely, making sure that it goes in a way that the industry
05:09can benefit from and adapt to. And of course, GSE release, Fannie and Freddie, the perennial topic,
05:18is heating up. We are very clear on our goals that whatever form Fannie and Freddie take post
05:27conservatorship, not increase the cost of home financing. And we think that that means that it
05:35requires an explicit guarantee from the Congress on the mortgage-backed securities of the GSEs.
05:40So, you know, we talked on stage about how there's, there's been some confusion on this
05:45point, because you have multiple people talking. And at one point, we had President Trump
05:50posting some things that it was like, okay, so is this happening like right now? And then he talked
05:56about an implicit guarantee. And that was confusing, I think, at least to me, someone who,
06:02because from the beginning, you talked about when it looked like, oh, okay, you know, if the election
06:07goes one way, this might be back on the table. From the very beginning, NBA has said, great,
06:12but we want it safe and sound if there's an exit. And we want an explicit guarantee, because that's
06:17what our industry needs for safety and soundness. So what did you think when you saw implicit guarantee?
06:22Were you like, oh, no?
06:24Well, it was a surprise for sure. But I don't think we can read too much into his posts.
06:30I don't think there's a set path. And I don't think there's a set timetable for release. And
06:37the intricacies of what is considered implicit versus explicit are considerable. And the President
06:48has a lot of other things on his plate. And so I wouldn't read too much into that post and assume
06:55that there is an endpoint in mind yet. I think something that's been encouraging in all of the
07:01communication from the White House about this issue or his administration is they have tried
07:07very much to emphasize the safety and soundness. Because when that's in question, bad things happen.
07:13Yes, safety and soundness and also the effect on consumers. This administration ran on
07:22bringing inflation down, having things be more affordable, very much including housing.
07:28And so they consistently say that however they structure a post-conservatorship Fannie and Freddie,
07:36that it should not have a negative impact on interest rates. So we are in lockstep with them
07:41on that point and will work closely with them as the very thorny issues that have to get ironed out
07:47before release come down the pike. So deregulation, you talked about that that's one of the bright
07:53spots that maybe we're not really paying attention to. And it's hard because, first of all, not a lot
07:58of people know how the sausage gets made anyway, right? They're not in the weeds on that. And those
08:03headlines can get buried under some other headlines. So when you look at that, what are the biggest wins?
08:09And did the administration, as they were looking to, you know, make a lot of cuts in personnel,
08:15if not money, to HUD, obviously CFPB, all that, did they come to you and, I mean, are they taking
08:20industry input on like, here's what, here's where some of that fraud, waste, I don't know about fraud
08:27abuse, here's where some waste is and here's what you shouldn't touch?
08:30Yes. We've had very extensive conversations with HUD, FHFA and CFPB as they've gone through this
08:37process and pointed out, I'll give you one quick example. The CFPB totaled up all of the guidance
08:46documents, things that aren't, don't rise to the level of a rule, haven't gone through the
08:51Administrative Procedure Act and dating back to Cordray and Chopra's eras at the Bureau and said,
08:57we're going to rescind guidance that imposes obligations on lenders that didn't go through
09:05the Administrative Procedure Act. Interesting.
09:07But if there are helpful guidances that are useful to lenders in clarifying a statute or a regulation
09:17to make it easier to comply with, which is the kind of guidance we at MBA support, then we should
09:24consider keeping them. So our staff went through dozens, hundreds, I don't know, of these guidances
09:31and came up with, I want to say about a dozen, and said, please retain these because they don't
09:37impose additional burdens on lenders, but they are useful in having lenders comply with the
09:44applicable statute or rule. And I'm pleased to report that the Bureau retained every single
09:50one that we suggested they do. So the administration is striking to what I consider the right balance
09:57between getting back to basics, getting back to the statutory mandates, but having a practical
10:03approach that says, if there are ways that we can help you comply, that clarify things as opposed to
10:09impose additional mandates, then let's keep those in place.
10:13You know that, and I know you guys are doing that work and then like, how do we get the word out
10:16about what the specifics are? Or maybe the question is like, at what point does that come down into
10:22someone's workflow? At what point does that become real to the person in the field doing the work?
10:27Yeah. So I think what you'll see is it'll be a little bit gradual because lenders have built up muscle
10:35memory and compliance staffs and checkers, checking the checkers to make sure they stay safe and on the
10:42right side of all these regs. And as they get loosened or changed, I think it'll take a little
10:48time to work it through the workflow. But then you'll see bigger changes, like I was mentioning
10:54this morning on stage, that loan officer compensation rule at the Bureau is now on the list to be
11:01reconsidered. And that could open up enormous efficiencies in the lending process and be good
11:08for consumers. It's something we've urged the Bureau to do, dating back to Kathy Kraninger's time
11:14at the Bureau in the first Trump administration. And we're finally going to get a chance for meaningful
11:19reform there. So you'll start to see they've started with some ones that are perhaps a little
11:24easier to do, whether it's rescinding the requirement that non-banks form a registry of any past enforcement
11:33actions, which is completely duplicative of what the CSBS already does, or whether it's saying Fannie and
11:40Freddie don't have to be compliance regulators of their lenders, or the HUD flood and building code
11:47rules, all these things. They each matter individually. But then when we get to the bigger ones that are
11:53going to require notice and comment and take a longer process, when we get some of those across the
11:58finish line, I think you'll hear cheers from the industry writ large and start to really dig into
12:06reducing the cost of producing a mortgage and getting a better product for the consumer.
12:11It's got to be so encouraging to see that momentum start to build, even on the, you know, okay, we'll
12:16start with the stuff that didn't go through the process. That's a great place to start. We are going
12:20to get to the other things. It's got to, for you, be really gratifying to see that.
12:24I was just going to use that word. It is gratifying because it does feel a little bit like Sisyphus
12:29pushing the rock up the mountain. And just as you get to the peak, it rolls back down and you start
12:34all over again, because some of these, whether it's legislative issues like trigger leads or whether
12:40it's things that the administration needs to do, it can be discouraging when you, you know, you say,
12:47oh, what are you, what's your list of priorities? Like, oh, geez, that's still on the list because we
12:50haven't gotten it done. And now we're really ticking them off. So it is really gratifying. And
12:54again, I think the smoke caused by all the other things going on with this fast and furious approach
13:03of the administration, it tends to obscure this stuff, but it's really meaningful.
13:08Let's talk about that a little bit as a, you know, as an organization that is so focused on advocacy
13:14and, and, and you're so plugged into Washington, what is the difference in, in the administration
13:19meant to you and your staff? As far as just from a, um, you were talking on stage how, you know,
13:24like part of the disruption is, is a feature, not a bug of this administration. They've been really
13:29upfront about that. Like, this is the way this, their mode of operating. So how does, what does that
13:32mean for you guys?
13:34Well, it, it's exhilarating because there are things that, um, in other administrations,
13:41maybe would take six months of a listening session and then a comment period and then
13:48further analysis and then a several year implementation period. We find openness from
13:54this administration to massively accelerate timelines and to have an approach that doesn't
14:03get mired in the muck, but says what makes sense, a much more common sense bent.
14:11And that lets us get things done faster and cut through the, cut through the noise. So it's
14:17really, I think our people are really exhilarated by the change in tone.
14:22Interesting. Let's talk specifically about the CFPB, right? The thorn in the side of the industry,
14:28uh, since its founding and really it was such a different kind of agency, right? They really took
14:33a different approach to enforcement. I know as long as I've been at housing wire, you know, CFPB has been
14:39big talking point. It's been, I mean, we, we talked about, it's been gutted again on stage. I said,
14:46you know, it's hard to tell exactly what's going on because people get fired. And then there are
14:49court cases that said, no, they have to be rehired. And then have they been rehired? Are they, where are
14:52we in that process? But at CFPB specifically, what are some of those changes that our audience would
14:58want to know about? Sure. Well, you've heard, um, I won't refer to him as acting director Calabria,
15:06although that's effectively what he is, uh, in his detail from the OMB say, I'm not going to pursue
15:15a case against a lender where we can't identify a single wronged or harmed consumer. And that may
15:25seem blindingly obvious, right? But there's this, there, there's been this theory of enforcement
15:33statistically based, particularly in the fair lending side and tremendous cost for the lender
15:40to defend against these actions. And again, no named specific party that's been harmed. And they've
15:51just said, we're not doing that. And that, that saves costs for lenders, which then makes it cheaper
16:00for borrowers to get loans. And, and I, and I want to be very clear here. MBA is for fair lending
16:08enforcement. And yes, there are bad actors and there are harmed parties. Go after them. Right. Let's not
16:16have these, uh, wild goose chases based on statistics and not on, on harm to individuals. That's,
16:25that's the distinction. I want to be very clear that we're not saying Katie bar the door and there are no
16:30rules because that's not what we think at all. And there are other, uh, things at the Bureau. I mentioned
16:36loan officer compensation. We've been very clear with the Bureau that gutting the Bureau Bureau is not what we think
16:45the right approach is. We, we leave to the administration what they think the right size of the Bureau is
16:52with the caveat that they retain enough people who can revise rules because it's one thing to say, I'm not going to
17:00enforce something or are I going to change my enforcement stance that could all reverse in the
17:05next administration. So what we need are durable changes, which means you have to go through the
17:10hard work of revising the rule, putting it out for public comment, using the administrative procedure
17:15act, and then making it final. And then you have durable change that my members can rely on in their
17:22process for the longterm. Such a great point because, um, you know, yeah, it's one thing to be like,
17:28oh, we don't have to worry about that right now. Well, what about four years, three and a half years
17:33from now? Right? Exactly. And those things have statutes of limitations that are long and you could
17:38be racking up the liability if you are, um, if you are, uh, lulled into this sense of, well, if they're
17:47not enforcing it, I don't have to do it. We need to have the rules reflect the new reality and then we can
17:54all follow them. Do you see your lender members, um, you know, which way do they lean? Do you think
18:00they're like, woohoo, throw it all off? Or do you feel like they're almost more still cautious and
18:04they're like, I'm not letting go of those compliance people because I, they've just been so burned.
18:09I mean, I think mostly the latter. And I think, and that's what we would advise too until
18:13something is formally done. And now some things have been formally done. Like some of the things I
18:19mentioned, that's all set, but some of the ones that require you to keep a, what some would consider
18:26elevated level of compliance staff and process on hand, they're going to wait and we encourage them
18:34to wait until the rule is changed and made final because otherwise you're just heaping up, uh, potential
18:40future liability. And, and we want rules of the road. We don't want the wild west. We don't think
18:47that's good for lenders or borrowers, but we want them to be easy to understand, uh, easy to follow
18:55and reasonable enforcement when they're not. Yeah. I'll never forget when I was, uh, newly with
19:01housing wire, we did an interview with Richard Cordray, who at that time was, uh, the CFPB director.
19:06And he was very clear that like, if I make the rules, um, clear, then people are going to figure
19:12out how to get around the rules. So his whole idea was like, no, we're going to do, um,
19:17regulation by enforcement, which means that you don't know what it's going to be. I was
19:20like, how does that make, I was not in the mortgage industry. It's not like I had a dog
19:24in the spot, but I was like, that makes no sense at all. How in the world do you, do you
19:28run it like that?
19:30One of the things that then director Cordray did was, uh, as it relates to RESPA and, and
19:37how, uh, RESPA governs whether you can have an affiliated business arrangement, like with
19:42a realtor or a builder, if you're a lender. And he basically just came out and said, I
19:48cannot think of a compliant way to structure an affiliated business arrangement. And I'm
19:54like, Whoa, not your listeners are too young to remember, but that's like Ralph Nader saying
20:01Corvairs are unsafe at any speed.
20:03Oh my gosh. I remember that.
20:04Come on. You have a statute on the books that allows for with guardrails, these affiliated
20:11business arrangements. And you've got the guy enforcing the statute saying, I can't think
20:15of a compliant way to structure one. I mean, that's no way to run a railroad. So yeah, regulation
20:23by enforcement is bad. It's bad news, but now I think it's done.
20:30Yeah, no, I think the nail is in that coffin for sure. Um, you did raise a point on stage
20:35where you're like, but you have to think about the States. So it's not just a federal deal.
20:38That's true. That's true. And we're very active in the States and we, uh, we know that the
20:46action can move from the federal government to the States when there's a perception that
20:51the federal government is taking its foot off the gas. So we'll be very mindful of that.
20:55Bob, thank you so much for, first of all, being here, being on stage and also doing this
21:00podcast. I, um, we, I always learn a lot and I know our audience appreciates it so much.
21:04So thank you so much.
21:05Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate it.
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