CMBA is committed to your professional development, including providing the necessary licensing requirements you need to do business in California!

As part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, the federal government established the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008 (S.A.F.E. Act), which will require the state licensing or federal registration (depending upon how your company is licensed) for all residential mortgage loan originators. Each state must enact a licensing system by August 1, 2009 that meets the minimum standards set forth in the S.A.F.E. Act, as determined by HUD. If a state fails to enact such legislation, HUD will establish a licensing system for that state. Further all loan originators must be registered with the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System & Registry (NMLSR) which is maintained by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) and the American Association of Residential Mortgage Regulators (AARMR). THE NMLSR requires registered loan officers to submit fingerprints for a state and federal background check and personal history and experience.

This issue is among the top legislative priorities for the CMBA in 2009. CMBA has taken the lead with other financial industry associations and legislative leadership to begin discussion on how to implement this new legislation in California. Our goal being to create a system that provides strong consumer protection, rids the industry of bad actors, and allows for the streamline implementation of this mandatory legislation for all California mortgage bankers. Our Legislative Committee will be working on the language for this important legislation so if you’re employed with a member company and would like to be a part of that committee in 2009, please contact us.

Further, as part of the NMLSR, each loan originator must complete 20 hours of pre-licensure education and an annual 8 hours of continuing educational courses approved by the NMLSR. While this legislation may not take affect for at least 12 months, be assured that CMBA will be your source for this mandatory continuing education. Beginning in 2009, CMBA will be partnering with Campus MBA, the educational arm of the national MBA, to offer these courses through a variety of delivery methods to make compliance with this legislation as simple and efficient as possible. In fact, the new partnership we’re launching with Campus MBA will allow us to provide a wide variety of industry education that will be targeted specifically to our needs in California. If you have input on what type of educational courses you’d like to see next year, please send your thoughts to our Executive Director, Susan DeMars.