Following up on a series of enforcement actions against industry
participants engaged in "marketing services agreements"
("MSAs"), the CFPB issued a Compliance Bulletin (No.
2015-15) entitled "RESPA Compliance and Marketing Services
Agreements ["MSAs"]." (The Bulletin can be accessed
by clicking here.) The thrust of the Bulletin is again
warning companies that "many MSAs necessarily involve
substantial legal and regulatory risk for the parties to the
agreement, risks that are greater and less capable of being
controlled by careful monitoring than mortgage industry
participants may have recognized in the past."
Background. MSAs have been around for some time now.
Basically, they are contracts in which a person who is in a
position to refer settlement service business (e.g., real
estate brokers, title insurance agents, residential mortgage
lenders) agrees to perform certain advertising and marketing
services on behalf of a settlement service provider in return
