Treasury Denies BofA Claim of Electronic Error in Latest HAMP Report

When Bank of America (BAC) reported 70,000 permanent modifications conducted under the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) through May, it blamed an uploading error for the 7,000 permanent modifications that the bank claims will be missing on the Treasury report later this month. The Treasury, however, denies this and reports that there are no known errors with its electronic reporting system, according to an official at the government entity. For May, BofA reported more than 70,000 permanent modifications conducted since the program launched in March 2009 through May 2010. But, BofA said in the company statement that “[i]t is likely that more than 7,000 permanent modifications were not recorded as complete.” As a result, BofA said that the Treasury HAMP report due out later this month will show 63,000 permanent modifications instead of the 70,000. This, said Rebecca Mairone, default servicing executive for BofA Home Loans, is due to “issues that we experienced in uploading some files to the computerized system.” But a Treasury official told HousingWire there were no known errors in the Treasury’s system of record that would have prohibited all of the Bank of America permanent modifications from being entered and validated in the system of record. The Treasury reports the amount of permanent modifications conducted through HAMP based on the numbers uploaded in the Treasury system of record by the participating servicers. The Treasury official said that as servicers pushed more conversions from trials into permanent status, the Treasury public report issued every month showed pending permanent modifications in order to give servicers credit for permanent modifications that may not have been officially reported. Borrowers must make three monthly payments and submit all documentation during the trial stage before receiving a permanent modification to their mortgage. In April, the participating servicers in HAMP reported 300,000 permanent modifications through HAMP. Write to Jon Prior.