Oregon's Attorney General John Kroger recently proposed extending the rules from the recent nationwide mortgage settlement with Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Ally Financial to all mortgage servicers who do business in Oregon. Besides resulting in a monetary $25 billion settlement also introduced new mortgage servicing standards for those banks, including tightened document standards and new protections to borrowers facing foreclosure.

While the settlement alleviated issues with these 5 main banks, mortgage standards have not been changed for a number of other providers which consumers have continually been complaining about. The Oregon department of Justice stated it received more than 1,700 complaints about 40 other mortgage loan servicers since 2008. These proposed ruled, if adopted would become Oregon law.

The proposed rules would:

• require lenders to include certain information on monthly statements, including the total amount due, how previous payments were allocated, the current escrow balance and an explanation for any change in the payment.
• make it illegal for a loan servicer to tell a borrower to go into default to qualify for a loan modification.
• require servicers to notify borrowers of foreclosure mitigation programs, as well as their eligibility requirements.
• require servicers to rule on a request for a loan modification before referring the borrower to foreclosure.

Documents from the national mortgage settlement outline nearly 42 pages of servicing standards agreed to by each bank.