Associated Press | Taking aim at deceptive lending, the Senate
on Wednesday voted to ban mortgage brokers and loan officers from
getting greater pay for offering higher interest rates on loans, and to
require that borrowers prove they can repay their loans.

The Senate, however, rejected a measure that would have required
homebuyers to make a minimum downpayment of 5 percent on their loans.
The votes were part of the Senate’s deliberations on a broad overhaul
of financial regulations designed to avoid a repeat of the crisis that
struck Wall Street in 2008.

Separately, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to let the Federal Reserve retain its supervision of smaller banks. The underlying regulation bill would have given the central bank oversight only over the largest financial institutions.

Regional Fed presidents have lobbied senators to allow them to continue watching over smaller bank holding companies and state-chartered community banks. Limiting the Fed’s supervision only to bank holding companies with assets of more than $50 billion — as proposed by Senate Banking Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. — would have left most of the Fed’s 12 regional banks without any institutions under their oversight.

The lending-related measures attempted to respond to one of the issues at the heart of the financial crisis — the abundance of bad mortgage-backed securities that nearly toppled Wall Street and knocked some of the nation’s largest financial institutions to their knees.

“Credit was extended to people who couldn’t pay their mortgages back, and those were passed throughout the world,” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. “So we had a systemic crisis, not only in this country, but around the world.”

Senators voted 63-36 to amend an underlying financial regulation bill to place restrictions on how mortgage brokers and bank loan officers get compensated. Supporters argued that consumers were steered into higher rate mortgages that they were unable to pay, resulting in foreclosures and toxic mortgage-backed securities that poisoned the markets.

Borrowers would have to provide evidence of their income, either though tax returns, payroll receipts or bank documents. That provision seeks to eliminate so-called stated-income loans where borrowers offered no proof of their ability to pay.

But the Senate voted 57-42 against a Republican amendment offered by Corker that set tougher underwriting standards, including the downpayment requirement. That measure also would have eliminated a condition that mortgage lenders retain 5 percent of any mortgages they resell in the securities market.

Democrats opposed the Corker plan, citing both their desire to have banks keep some of the risk of the mortgages they write and their concern that the downpayment mandate would hurt lower income families.

“The downpayment is only a portion of the skin in the game that such families have because there are tremendous closing costs associated with these loans that the families must bear as well,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., the sponsor of the competing Democratic proposal.

Mortgage brokers opposed Merkley’s measure, arguing it would create a two-tiered system separating mortgage brokers from bank lenders. They noted that the amendment would permit banks to receive greater payments from investors, such as large Wall Street firms, for bundled mortgages with higher interest rates.

“It’s a legal incentivizing payment for those very loans that put the industry in this mess,” said Roy DeLoach, executive vice president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers. “

Corker rewrote his underwriting proposal to include the provision that forced banks to retain some risk in mortgages they sell and was hoping for a new vote. Meanwhile, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., were seeking a vote on an amendment that would exempt banks from retaining risk in loans that regulators determine are safely securitized.