I’m not changing my mind on this one. An NMLS sponsored MLO is an employee. Period.

This just keeps showing up on audits – merits a second read.

October 18^th, 2016

The debate rages on. Unfortunately, most of those who have challenged our position that an MLO must be a W-2 – are either asking the wrong people for advice, or are not asking the question in an open and honest way.

If you have found an attorney who is telling you your 1099 practice is just fine, ask him for his written legal opinion. You will need that to show to the regulator that makes this an issue. While it won’t guarantee you won’t have a finding or fine, it is a defense of sort. Except I warned you, didn’t I. And the attorney won’t pay your fine for you.

The only reasonable conclusion is that a sponsored MLO is an employee.

We include the attachment titled 22-mlo-w2-discussion-021015 to our clients at the front of our MLO Policy Manual – Book Two. You should read this first. Let’s set…

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Read about these changes to the Social Security Death Index.

“The Social Security Death Index is the commercial name for what the government refers to as the Death Master File (DMF). The Death Master File is available to the public; however obtaining full access is difficult. On December 26, 2013 President Obama signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 which among other things limited access to the Death Master File in order to curb identity theft. In order to access the DMF one must now be certified by the Secretary of Commerce to have a “legitimate fraud prevention interest or a legitimate business purpose pursuant to law, rule, regulation or fiduciary duty.”

In addition to being certified, there is a substantial fee. At the time of writing this, a yearly subscription costs nearly $1,400.00 per year.

Banks, financial institutions, investigators, people finding services and genealogy searching sites are among those who are certified to access the DMF. Some of these sites make the information available to the public in the form of Social Security Death Index search tools (these search tools are required by law to pay for updates to the DMF in order to keep their records up-to-date).

The Social Security Death Index contains nearly 90 million records. There are records for people born as early as the 1800’s however there are very few. These death records were originally stored in paper form in filing cabinets in Social Security Administration buildings across the county. In the late 20th century, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software was used to digitize the records.

Because of the difficulty of keeping physical records and the tediousness of digitizing them, there are numerous errors throughout the data set – omissions, misspellings, missing data, different date formats, and typos are common. Bigger mistakes such as mixing up first and last name are not unheard of. If a name or Social Security Number is not found in the database it does not mean the person is still alive. Corrections can be made to the Social Security Death Index by submitting corrections to your local Social Security Office.” 

I read the highlights of the bill and confirmed that the government did indeed institute this “fee based access”. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipartisan_Budget_Act_of_2013 

Thus we are taking the death list out of future manuals. If you choose to  pay for the service or use a free service if you can find one, that is fine.

Nelson A. Locke

Compliance Services, USA

(800) 656-4584

http://www.expertlenderservices.com

The CHOICE Act – affects CFPB structure and rule making. NOT the need for strong compliance.

By a vote of 233-188, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act yesterday.  The bill, often referred to as the Dodd-Frank Act replacement bill, includes an overhaul of the CFPB’s structure and authority and makes significant changes to the rulemaking process followed by the CFPB and federal banking agencies.

As passed by the full House, the bill includes several amendments to the version of the bill passed by the House Financial Services Committee on May 4.  One such amendment is the amendment introduced by House Financial Services Committee Chairman, Jeb Hensarling, to strike the provision which purported to repeal the Durbin Amendment.  Based on reports we have seen, it does not appear any of the amendments impact the bill’s provisions dealing with the CFPB.

The bill’s fate in the Senate is very uncertain, with most pundits predicting it will not pass the Senate in its current form.