The Federal Reserve Board on July 23 proposed significant changes to Regulation Z, the Truth in Lending Act regulation, including new consumer protections for receiving home mortgages and home equity lines of credit. These changes include a prohibition of payments to a mortgage broker or loan officer that are based on the loan's interest rate or other terms (often referred to as "yield spread premiums" or "overages"), and a prohibition of a mortgage broker or loan officer "steering" consumers to transactions that are not in the consumer's best interest in order to increase the mortgage broker's or loan officer's compensation. The Board maintains that consumers rely on the professional expertise of brokers and other loan originators and expect they will act fairly. These expectations, however, are not met when the consumer is steered into a more expensive loan. As a result, the Board's proposal went beyond disclosure revisions and suggested these substantive protections. However, the proposal stopped short of imposing on the originator a fiduciary duty to the customer. Such a responsibility would require that the originator find the “best” loan to meet a consumer's requirements. The proposal only prohibits the originator from steering a customer to a more expensive or risky loan to increase the originator's own fees, but does not require the extra step of requiring the originator to seek out the best available loan product.

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