Top Banking Regulator Questions Quality of Information from Banks, Mortgage Firms

New York–Speaking in New York Wednesday, John C. Dugan, comptroller of the currency–which monitors national banks–said banks and mortgage firms are offering questionable information about the subprime borrowers they are assisting and their borrowers’ foreclosure rate. Dugan said his agency uncovered “significant limitations with the mortgage performance data reported by other organizations and trade associations,” according to the Washington Post.”Virtually none of the data had been subjected to a rigorous process to check for consistency and completeness–they were typically responses to surveys that produced aggregate, unverified results from individual firms,” Dugan said. “That lack of loan-level validation raised real questions about the precision of the data, at least for our supervisory purposes.”In an interview, Dugan said he was commenting on information the Mortgage Bankers Association and other groups provided.