borrower

It takes longer time for Bank of America to answer phone calls from borrowers with distressed home loans. Besides, the bank loses more calls too, as reported by six months of Treasury Department reports.

The answering time for BofA has averaged 40 seconds or more each month since May when the US Treasury started collecting call-center data from the eight largest servicers in its mortgage modification program. Thus, BofA, the largest U.S. bank and the largest mortgage servicer, had the slowest answering speed in four of the six months.

This week Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $102 million to end an investigation launched by Massachusetts prosecutors into the company’s unfair and deceptive lending practices.

According to the statement of Martha Coakley, the state's attorney general, Morgan Stanley which funded subprime loans throughout the country, improperly loaned billions of dollars to New Century which then sold loans to unqualified borrowers in the state. Morgan Stanley also packaged these risky loans and sold them to big investors like pension funds.

CitiMortgage and CitiFinancial North America, both units of Citigroup, today announced a national foreclosure suspension program for Citi-owned mortgages to allow distressed homeowners to remain in their homes through the holiday season. During the 30 day suspension, effective December 18, 2009 through January 17, 2010, borrowers with first mortgage loans owned by CitiMortgage and CitiFinancial North America and who meet certain other criteria will not be subject to foreclosure sales or foreclosure notifications.

 In times of economic hardship people often loose their income and get behind on credit card payments. Fortunately, bankruptcy is not the only way out. Many lenders, including Discover, American Express, Bank of America, Chase, Capital One, Citi, HSBC, and GE Money offer credit card hardship programs for individuals and families suffering from financial stress.

 On Monday the US Treasury Department plans to meet with lenders to discuss what more could be done to address troubled home mortgage loans according to the sources familiar with the situation.

 The UK Financial Services Authority has plans to require mortgage lenders to check the income level of all borrowers for their ability to repay the loans. The regulators seeks to prevent financial companies from providing mortgage credit to "liar loans" blamed for helping to fuel bad debt problems at the heart of the credit crunch.

The FSA plans to impose affordability tests for all mortgages, but stopped short of imposing ratio limits that could have effectively banned loans for 100 percent or more of property prices.