Bank of America Stealing Homes

Bank of America Foreclosure Reviews: How Promontory Became a Shadow Regulator (Part VA)

Today we release the two latest posts in our whistleblower series on the Bank of America foreclosure reviews, focusing on the role of the “independent” consultant hired to perform the reviews, Promontory Financial Group.

The Plot So Far

As we described in earlier posts in this series (Executive Summary, Part II, Part IIIA, Part IIIB, Part IV, and Part IVB), OCC/Federal Reserve foreclosure reviews meant to provide compensation to abused homeowners were abruptly shut down at the beginning of January as the result of a settlement with ten major servicers. Whistleblowers from the biggest, Bank of America, came forward to provide compelling evidence that the bank and its independent consultant, Promontory Financial Group, attempted to suppress evidence that borrowers had been harmed by the false and deceptive practices of the mortgages lenders. Together, they reviewed over 2500 files. When asked to estimate the percentage of harm and serious harm they found, the lowest estimate of harm was 30%, with the majority judging the rate of harm at or over 90%. Estimates of serious harm ranged from 10% to 80%.

In this post and the next, we focus on how Promontory was badly conflicted and incompetent. Here we discuss how it has become a powerful, yet unaccountable shadow regulator. In the next post, we show how it made a hash of the foreclosure reviews and probe what the egregious expenses might be hiding.

Promontory, the Shadow Banking Regulator

Promontory has increasingly come to serve as the dominant shadow regulator in the financial services arena. It is difficult to name a player who occupies a similar role in any other heavily regulated industry.

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