Lawmakers Urge Preservation of Reverse Mortgage Provisions in Wall Street Reform Bill

Courtesy of Reverse Mortgage Daily

While members of the US Senate and House of Representatives meet to negotiate the final version of Wall Street reform legislation, Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Herb Kohl (D-WI) recently sent a letter to the members of the conference committee urging them to preserve language they feel will improve consumer protections and strengthen oversight of the reverse mortgage industry.

“We believe it is critically important to ensure that there are strong consumer protections in place so that seniors who do not need or want these expensive products will not be pressured into buying them,” the senators wrote in the letter.

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Several weeks ago, McCaskill and Kohl introduced an amendment to the Wall Street reform legislation that would have required the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to issue a new rule to create standards for whether a reverse mortgage is suitable for seniors, prohibit misleading advertisements, and increase regulation and transparency of the reverse mortgage industry.

The two Senators sent a letter the conferees to include the provision in the conference report, asking the conferees to “make clear that nothing in the bill is intended to limit or constrain the new consumer regulator’s authority to write rules or enforce consumer protections on reverse mortgages under other existing statutes which are not named explicitly in Section 4316 of the House-passed bill.”

McCaskill and Kohl emphasized that “stronger consumer protections in the reverse mortgages industry will help protect America’s seniors from predatory lending practices and ensure that America’s seniors are never pressured into purchasing exotic financial tools that aren’t suitable for them.”

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You can read a copy of the letter sent to the conferees here.