Conference Looks to Target Defense Litigation for Subprime Lenders/Servicers

As the subprime industry continues to roil in market woes, an interesting new conference looks to address strategies lenders and servicers can use to minimize and fight litigation risk throughout the subprime loan cycle — called the Subprime Lending Litigation & Regulatory Enforcement Conference, creatively enough, the company putting on the event issued a press release this morning. Here’s the conference Web site. The conference lists well-regarded Inside Mortgage Finance Publications, Inc. as its primary media sponsor. On the agenda are sessions on loss mitigation strategies to prevent servicing, collections and foreclosure claims; determining third party liability for origination practices; asessing liability in the secondary market; assessing sufficiency of borrower disclosures; state enforcement reviews; and more. I have to wonder how the USFN and AFN feel about this sort of effort, and if they’ll choose to be involved at all — a good part of the conference agenda seems to fall directly into their sweet spot, although certainly not all of it. Both the USFN and AFN are essentially legal consortiums centered on loan servicing — foreclosure, bankruptcy, loss mit, REO, etc. And both hold their own well-attended conferences for servicers each year that are large sources of revenue for the organization and for its members. Nearly every attorney that does servicing-related legal work nationwide is a member of one or both of these organizations — meaning that if neither organization participates, a session on foreclosure claims would be pretty weak. Then again, as with most of the default servicing industry, a conference like this might a great way to “close the gap” that often exists between loan origination and loan administration.