MBA’s Broeksmit says ‘harassment, deception and distrust from trigger leads’ must end

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is prioritizing its legislative work on a bill that would ban the practice of trigger leads, in which consumer credit reporting agencies share with other lenders that a “hard credit report” was pulled for a mortgage application. This can lead to an onslaught of calls to the consumer vying for their lending business.

Bob Broeksmit, the MBA’s president and CEO, published a blog post in which he urges stakeholder and congressional support for the association’s efforts to do away with the practice.

“Across the country, from Alaska to Florida, people’s privacy, financial well-being, and even their livelihoods are under attack from a barrage of unwanted emails, texts, and phone solicitations at all hours of the day — simply because they made a query about obtaining a mortgage,” Broeksmit wrote in a post published on Thursday.

He went on to say that securing the passage of a bill to end the practice is MBA’s “top national legislative priority,” which will serve to protect consumers from the practices he called “abuses.”

“We asked our members to share feedback from customers who were subject to a trigger lead solicitation,” he said, going on to offer testimonials that aim to “illustrate the depth and scope of the problem.”

Broeksmit cited several cases from MBA members, including a 73-year-old widower in California who sought to access home equity.

“He was practically in tears from the harassing calls, he’s of the generation when the phone rings you answer it,” the testimonial said. “This needs to stop.”

Another example explained that trigger lead originators relentlessly called the husband of the testimonial provider, who is a firefighter. Since his business phone number is listed, these originators “bombarded the fire station phones trying to reach him,” which “put the general public at risk due to these invasive calls and disrupted operations at the station.”

Broeksmit added that “deception and fraud are rampant with trigger leads.” He cited testimonials in California and Missouri about personal information being compromised, leading to illegitimate charges that created financial distress.

Broeksmit then shared a series of testimonials that illustrate how “abusive trigger lead practices undermine the trust and personal relationships at the heart of the home mortgage business.” In one example, a lender in Mississippi explained how they needed to rebuild trust with their borrowers following aggressive trigger lead solicitations.

The Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act of 2024, a U.S. Senate bill introduced this past December that targets mortgage trigger leads, has been incorporated into the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Congress must pass the NDAA each year, since it refers to laws that specify the annual budget for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Broeksmit said that MBA is pleased with this development. The trade group is “working with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle […] to make sure this provision is included in the final version of the NDAA,” he said. “Congress must help homebuyers before it adjourns later this year.”