CFPB Considers Permanently Restoring Covid Mortgage Protections (1)

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking information to possibly make pandemic-era foreclosure prevention and automatic refinancing programs permanent features of the mortgage market.

The Thursday request for information for rulemaking is seeking input from lenders and other interested parties on ways to automatically allow financially vulnerable borrowers—due to natural disasters, pandemics and other events out of their control—to pause payments and extend the loan maturity date. Such automatic protections could also help mortgage servicers, the CFPB said.

The CFPB’s automatic mortgage refinancing proposal would have loans of certain borrowers—the ones with low balances and minority groups that weren’t able ...