Marketing Services Agreements: Alive, Dead, or Life Support?

Jonathan Foxx
President & Managing Director
Lenders Compliance Group

For some time, I have been concerned about the borderline profiteering conducted by some compliance professionals in their effort to pick up a few extra bucks by providing information vital to mortgage loan originators. It seems that making money from their professional services is not enough. They need to charge hundreds of dollars for webinars!

The most recent, egregious attempt to snatch at MLOs' wallets involves offering some insights about Marketing Services Agreements ("MSAs"). Hawking grisly scenarios of gloom and doom, these acquisitive webinar purveyors attract prominent professionals, and, with them on board the webinar gravy train, charge MLOs high fees for the privilege of hearing their baneful opinions by means of the webinar broadcast. One webinar host is charging nearly $450!

This is muck-up parading as mark-up!

The CFPB has expressed its view of Marketing Services Agreements ("MSAs") under Section 8 of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. The Bureau issued a Consent Order, in September 2014, against Lighthouse Title, Inc., a Michigan title insurance agency that had entered into a series of MSAs with various settlement service providers. 

The Consent Order: 

• clarifies the Bureau's concerns regarding methods used in determining the payments under such agreements; and
• raises troubling questions about how the Bureau interprets Section 8 of RESPA, since many of those interpretations seem to be at odds with guidance previously offered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But we have a solution to the jitters!

LCG is going to offer an absolutely free webinar: 

"Marketing Services Agreements - 

Alive, Dead, or Life Support?" 

October 8, 2015 at 1 PM - 2 PM EDT.

All you need to do is register and attend! 

Plus, for attendees only, the following important support will be offered:

• Outline of MSA requirements, in order to assist you in evaluating the structure of such relationships, plus

• Webinar Slides, plus

• Suite of Services, plus

• Email questions in a post-webinar Q&A.

Our webinars are usually highly attended and registration fills up quickly, so attendance is limited to the first 1,000 attendees. 

In this webinar, the topics covered are: 

• Background regarding MSA use,
• Highlight current regulatory issues raised by the Bureau's Consent Order, and
• Lessons learned for structuring new and existing MSAs.

This is not going to be a gloom and doom webinar! If you want that type of webinar, pay an exorbitant fee to attend the other webinars and get your share of doubt, pessimism and grief. MSAs have been a part of the industry for many years and the CFPB has not outlawed them at all, despite what you may have heard. Structured correctly, they are entirely legal!