Company: WTFCN
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001015328-25-000093
Chunk: 33

Company: WINTRUST FINANCIAL CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 33
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ator compensation standards, high-cost mortgage requirements, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act requirements and appraisal and escrow standards for higher priced mortgages. Most of the provisions of these mortgage-related final rules are currently effective. In addition, several proposed revisions to mortgage-related rules are pending finalization. The mortgage-related final rules issued by the CFPB have materially restructured the origination, servicing and securitization of residential mortgages in the United States. These rules have impacted, and will continue to impact, the business practices of mortgage lenders, including the Company. 

In order to ensure compliance with all mortgage-related rules and regulations, the Company consolidated its consumer mortgage loan origination and loan servicing operations primarily within Wintrust Mortgage. All consumer mortgage applications are taken through Wintrust Mortgage, which has extensively trained loan originators located at many of our branches. While in certain limited cases our banks may offer specialized consumer mortgages to our customers, substantially all consumer mortgages for all of our banks are originated and closed by Wintrust Mortgage. Wintrust Mortgage then sells loans to third parties or to our banks. To the extent that we retain consumer mortgage loans in our bank portfolios, our banks have engaged Wintrust Mortgage to provide loan servicing.

In March 2023, the CFPB issued the “Small Business Lending Rule” to implement Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act for the stated purpose of increasing transparency in small business lending, promoting economic development and combating unlawful discrimination. Under this rule, covered lenders, including the Company’s bank subsidiaries, are required to collect and report information about the small business credit applications they receive, including geographic and demographic data, lending decisions and the price of credit. In October 2023, a federal district court issued a nationwide injunction prohibiting the CFPB from implementing or enforcing the Small Business Lending Rule pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in an appeal of a Fifth Circuit decision finding that the CFPB’s funding structure is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court overruled the Fifth Circuit’s finding and extended the CFPB compliance deadlines for the Small Business Lending Rule to compensate for the period in which its implementation and enforcement of the rule was stayed by the district court. The extended compliance dates for the Small Business Lending Rule begin as early as July 2025. It is anticipated that the Company will require a material effort to update its systems and train its lenders to comply with the Small Business Lending Rule.

In October 2024, the CFPB finalized a rule to implement Section 1033 of the Dodd