The Next Victim of the Housing Crisis: Privacy of Mortgage Professionals

May 24th, 2008

Buried in a housing bill which was passed by the Senate housing committee by a vote of 19-2 on Tuesday is language attacking the privacy of those in the mortgage profession. Eessentially anybody receiving compensation for a loan or accepting an application will be required to provide their fingerprint into a newly created National Fingerprint Registry. The provision would seemingly cover everybody from lenders, to brokers, to real estate agents who receive compensation from mortgage activities.

The Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry which would be created would serve as the national repository for the fingerprints. The provisions covering the fingerprinting were introduced by Senators Chris Dodd and Richard Shelby.

To be honest, I’m not sure how this will accomplish anything meaningful and from what I’ve read it seems most people agree and in fact think that this might even increase identity theft. It’s for this reason that I’m concerned about this legislation. Based on the definition it seems I’d escape the need to fingerprint, but I’ve already written letters to Senator’s Feinstein and Boxer urging them to look into this, and vote against it if it comes up for their vote.

It should be noted that many states, including California already require some mortgage and real estate professionals to be fingerprinted. The concern here stems from the creation of a national database of fingerprints as opposed to fingeprints being taken solely for the purpose of verifying identity.

To read about the amendment put forth which contained the fingerprinting provisions, you may read the document here.

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