The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has come to a settlement with Specialized Loan Servicing LLC (SLS), a mortgage-loan servicer based in Colorado, NationalMortgageProfessional.com reported. The consent order requires SLS to pay $1.275 million in monetary relief to consumers in the form of redress and waiver of borrower deficiencies, pay a $250,000 civil money penalty, which will be paid to the Bureau and deposited into the Bureau’s Civil Penalty Fund, and implement procedures to ensure compliance with the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) and its implementing regulation, Regulation X. The CFPB’s found that since January 2014, SLS violated RESPA and Regulation X by taking prohibited foreclosure actions against mortgage borrowers who were entitled to protection from foreclosure, and by failing to send or to timely send evaluation notices to mortgage borrowers who were entitled to them. These violations also constitute violations of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010. In some cases, SLS’s violations of Regulation X short-circuited the protections against foreclosure for consumers whose homes were ultimately foreclosed upon.
