In a comment letter to the Department of Housing and Urban Development last week, the American Bankers Association joined three other industry groups offering feedback on a recent proposal to make changes to the Federal Housing Administration’s loan-level certification statement and defect taxonomy.
The groups called for the certification requirements to be removed altogether, noting that they are “unnecessary, considering the FHA’s ample authority to address deficiencies without certifications.” In lieu of removing the requirements, the groups urged HUD to consider replacing the loan-level certifications with a straightforward lender acknowledgement of key requirements based on loan eligibility.
The groups also supported adding to the defect taxonomy a statement that HUD will uniformly apply it as a national standard for all loan-level compliance monitoring and enforcement processes.