May-June2020 Issue

for the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and the Republican deputy staff director for the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations under Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL). Gormley Named New DAS of Single Family Housing Joseph M. Gormley, who most recently served as chief of staff to Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Commissioner Brian Montgomery, was named as the new Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Single Family Housing, effective January 21. He replaced Gisele Roget, who left in November. As the DAS for Single Family Housing, Gormley directly oversees the day-to-day management of the HECM program. Gormley joined FHA in 2017 and in his former role as chief of staff served as the principal adviser to the FHA commissioner and other senior HUD leaders on strategic planning, policy, priority initiatives and resource management. Prior to joining HUD, Gormley was assistant vice pres- ident and regulatory counsel at Independent Community Bankers of America where he was the policy lead on a wide range of legal and regulatory issues, including in the con- sumer financial protection realm. CFPB Releases Statement on Abusive Acts The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a policy statement regarding how it intends to apply the “abusiveness” standard in supervision and enforcement matters. Through this policy statement, the Bureau is clarifying how it intends to apply abusiveness in order to promote compliance and certainty. Effective immediately, the Bureau intends to apply the following principles during supervision and enforcement work by: • Focusing on citing or challenging conduct as abusive in supervision and enforcement matters only when the harm to consumers outweighs the benefit; • Avoiding “dual pleading” of abusiveness and unfairness or deception violations arising from all or nearly all the same facts, and alleging “stand alone” abusiveness violations that demonstrate clearly the nexus between cited facts and the bureau’s legal analysis; and • Seeking monetary relief for abusiveness only when there has been a lack of a good-faith effort to comply with the law, except the bureau will continue to seek restitution for injured consumers regardless of whether a company acted in good faith or bad faith. In the policy statement, the CFPB left open the possibility of engaging in a future rulemaking to further define the abusiveness standard. Committee Examines Social Security Scam The United States Senate Special Committee on Aging held a public hearing earlier this year that examined the Social Security impersonation scam that last year cost seniors $38 million. The committee also released its 2020 Fraud Book outlining the top ten scams reported through its fraud hotline. The hearing explored how the Social Security scam operates and explained what is currently being done to address it and what more can be done to stop it. The committee also heard from Machel Andersen of Ogden, UT, who was scammed out of more than $150,000. The Social Security scam generally involves criminals impersonating Social Security staff and calling victims to fraudulently take money from them or obtain their personally identifiable information. Congratulations, New CRMPs NRMLA congratulates the following individuals for becoming Certified Reverse Mortgage Professionals: • Larry Benton, a loan originator with Finance of America Reverse, Annapolis, MD; • Jill Hamilton, a loan originator with Ocean Lending, La Quinta, CA; • Ryan Philip, a loan originator with Longbridge Financial, Mahwah, NJ; • Ken Sawan, a loan originator with Longbridge Financial, Mahwah, NJ; and • Tom Smith, a loan originator with Power Mortgage, La Place, LA. And now you’re up to date. The Biz continued from page 11 Joseph Gormley 12 REVERSE MORTGAGE / MAY-JUNE 2020