The State Senate has completed the General Assembly’s work on HB 382 , legislation designed to better regulate mortgage loan originators and to provide help to combat mortgage fraud.
Senator Delbert Scott (R-Lowry City) sponsors the bill in the Senate. He says the legislation is a federal mandate that came about in response to the national mortgage crisis.
“In response to the mortgage failures and the fraud on the national level in the past two or three years,” said Scott. “Congress has demanded that all loan originators – people that start loans at banks or credit unions or mortgage brokers – be licensed or registered, actually have their own number – a specific number for each one of them – and to put that number on their business card, every contract they write.”
The requirements are quite thorough.
“They’ve got to be finger printed, they cannot have had felonies related to moral turpitude or fraud, they have to have extra training, annual hours of review,” said Scott. “So, in the long run, it’s probably going to clean up the agency. Consumers are going to benefit. It’s a pile of work along the way.”
Once signed by Governor Jay Nixon the legislation would take effect July 31st.