A key Senate leader is requesting records surrounding the cancellation of second mortgages following the Great Financial Crisis and asking whether the loans were sold to collections agencies in violation of a major legal settlement.
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In a request sent to the independent monitor responsible for oversight of the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who serves as ranking member of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, asked for delivery of records associated with the second mortgages eliminated under terms of the agreement.
In her letter, Warren suggested the banks involved may have agreed to the settlement and then turned around and sold those same loans, dubbed “zombie seconds,” to debt collectors. The request cited recent news headlines of attempted foreclosures on liens that many homeowners had forgotten existed.
“Servicers forgave over $15 billion of second mortgages. Servicers earned a set amount of ‘credit’ for these extinguishments towards their settlement obligations, and homeowners were supposed to be able to move forward with their lives without these second mortgages hanging over their heads,” the letter stated.
Resulting from negotiations involving both federal regulators and 49 state attorneys general, the 2012 settlement was aimed at providing homeowners financial relief and penalizing the five largest bank servicers for mortgage misconduct that led to the Great Financial Crisis. Banks signing onto the 2012 agreement were Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial.
The five institutions either declined to comment or did not respond to inquiries from National Mortgage News regarding the senator’s request.
Warren asked the independent monitor to produce records by Jan. 7, 2026.
Zombie mortgages rise in public consciousness
Reports began emerging this decade of attempted second-mortgage collections that have caught homeowners by surprise. Originated alongside primary liens, the resurrected piggyback loans were often taken to help lower initial down payments or eliminate mortgage insurance requirements.
In her letter, Warren noted some borrowers had not been sent second-lien statements or related correspondence for years and received official documentation noting the loans were canceled, only to discover servicers were pursuing repayment or foreclosure. Reports coincided with the rapid surge in home values this decade.
“Companies purchased millions of dollars of these second mortgages — and waited to collect until home prices rose,” Warren alleged in her letter.
“Now, Americans who thought they were doing everything right learned, in many cases many years later, that debt collectors seeking to exploit the increase in their home valuations were going to foreclose on their homes.”
The past two years has been marked by several lawsuits, as well as legislation and enforcement action, targeting mortgage servicers over their attempts to collect or foreclose on homes based on past-due second liens.
A new California borrower-protection law signed this summer makes unlawful specific types of servicer actions in connection with zombie mortgages. Lenders pushed back on the legislation this week, calling it “overreach” that would impede their operations.
Students can still get student loans mid-year, but timelines vary and delays can impact disbursement.
An Education Line of Credit (ELOC), such as those offered through Student Choice, can reduce the scramble by giving borrowers year-round access to approved funds.
Families who plan ahead with an ELOC often avoid the repeat application cycles, paperwork, and urgency that come with seeking loans late in the academic year.
What happens if you find out you’re short on financial aid going into next semester? It happens more often than you think – especially for first time families.
Mid-year financial shortfalls happen, driven by housing changes, course fees, study-abroad plans, or even transferring schools. The good news: students can still secure a loan during the academic year. The more difficult news: timing matters, and waiting until the need arises often leads to delays.
This timing mismatch is one reason students explore an Education Line of Credit. Instead of applying for a new loan every time a funding gap appears, an ELOC can offer a standing credit line¹ that students draw from as needed.
Our partner, Student Choice, and the credit unions with whom they work, offers this helpful tool to navigate your education costs. Check out Student Choice here and see if an Education Line of Credit makes sense for you >>
Why Mid-Year Borrowing Can Be Complicated
Financial aid processes are built around the academic calendar, not real life. FAFSA applications open in the fall, then institutional aid awards typically arrive in spring, and student loan applications happen during the summer.
When students borrow at a different point (say between semesters or after an unexpected balance appears) they may encounter four common hurdles:
School certification delays. Each loan must be verified by the financial aid office to ensure the loan does not exceed the student’s cost of attendance. During peak periods, processing times may be delayed.
Multiple applications. Students who rely on traditional private loans often apply more than once per year. Each application requires repeated credit checks, document uploads, and coordination with co-signers.
Limited flexibility. A single loan either covers a term or year. And it’s disbursed once a semester. When another expense appears (textbooks, lab fees) the student may not have the funds.
Time pressure. Students who learn about a past-due balance or payment deadline days before registration may feel squeezed between their school’s requirements and their lender’s approval timeline.
These factors don’t make mid-year borrowing impossible – they simply make it more stressful.
How An Education Line Of Credit Changes The Process
An Education Line of Credit (ELOC), such as those available through credit unions that work with Student Choice, is structured differently from a traditional private student loan. Instead of issuing a single disbursement per semester, an ELOC gives students a pre-approved credit limit they can tap whenever an expense arises. The approval process happens once, and the line of credit remains available for future academic years, subject to the loan’s terms.
The two biggest advantages for families are continuity and control.
Continuity: With an established credit limit, students don’t need to reapply for every semester or small expense. That helps smooth out financial interruptions, making mid-year needs far easier to handle.
Control: Students borrow only what they need, when they need it. Instead of taking out a large lump-sum loan each term, they can draw smaller amounts throughout the year – an approach that may reduce overall borrowing costs.
ELOCs also tend to streamline documentation if you have co-signers, since repeated application cycles for traditional loans can be time-consuming. By reducing paperwork and offering consistent access to funds, an ELOC can cut down on the last-minute scramble that often drives families to urgent borrowing.
How An ELOC Helps Students Avoid The “Last-Minute” Crunch
A common pattern emerges in mid-year borrowing: students didn’t secure funding for the second semester because they didn’t know if they’d be attending. Or the didn’t get enough financial aid, and savings were tight to pay a second semester out of pocket. Because deadlines for paying the bill can be tight, even a short delay in loan certification can have ripple effects.
With an Education Line of Credit already in place, students can request a disbursement quickly, without restarting the entire application process. This approach may help with:
Unexpected course fees such as lab materials or technology requirements.
Housing changes when students move on or off campus mid-year.
Changes to financial plans such as job changes that may make paying cash for college challenging in the short term.
Even when expenses are predictable (textbooks, housing, meal plans) households don’t always have a clear picture of the total cost until the semester is underway. An ELOC can act as a financial buffer that protects against timing issues rather than increasing long-term debt.
What This Means For Students And Families
If you’re already between semesters and looking for funding options, check out an Education Line of Credit.
Planning now can generally ensure you face fewer administrative hurdles in the future. That’s especially true for those who prefer not to apply for multiple private loans each year.
Students still need to consider interest rates, repayment terms, and other borrower protections. But for households navigating shifting college expenses, an ELOC can simplify the process and reduce the urgency that often accompanies mid-year funding needs.
Check out Student Choice and get a quote here >>
¹Subject to annual review and credit qualification. Must meet school’s Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) requirements.
Finastra is looking to help its bank clients streamline their mortgage lending processes with AI with multiple lending solutions. The London-based fintech has launched multiple AI-driven solutions including Loan IQ and LaserPro and is seeing banks gain efficiencies with its offerings, Andrew Bateman, executive vice president at Finastra’s lending business unit, told FinAi News. Loan IQ helps banks track their existing loans; LaserPro allows financial institutions to manage documentation and compliance on one platform, Bateman explained. “To understand the impact, you need to look at loan closure rates and the time […]
Actor Natasha Lyonne may not come from the tech world, but her production company is emerging as a trailblazer in bringing AI content to the big screen—and she has thoughts about the tech’s increasing influence.
Lyonne, who is most well-known for an on-screen roles in Netflix’s “Russian Doll” and “Orange is the New Black,” is also a writer, director, and the cofounder of Asteria Film Co., an artist-led animation and film studio that aims to provide high-quality and copyright friendly generative AI for marquee content.
Other AI video-generation models like OpenAI’s Sora 2 and Google’s Veo 3 have run into controversy for scraping the web and sometimes clashing with copyright rules. Asteria, which Lyonne co-founded in 2022, is taking a different approach.
Asteria partnered with Moonvalley AI, which makes AI tools for filmmakers, to create Marey, named after cinematographer Étienne-Jules Marey. The tool helps generate AI video that can be used for movies and TV, but only draws on open-license content or material it has explicit permission to use.
Being careful about the inputs for Asteria’s AI video generation is important, Lyonne said at the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco last week. As AI use increases, both tech and Hollywood need to respect the work of the cast, as well as the crew and the writers behind the scenes.
“I don’t think it’s super kosher copacetic to just kind of rob freely under the auspices of acceleration or China,” she said.
While she hasn’t yet used AI to help make a TV show or movie, Lyonne said Asteria has used it in other small ways to develop renderings and other details.
“It’s a pretty revolutionary act that we actually do have that model and that’s you know the basis for everything that we work on,” said Lyonne.
Marey is available to the public for a credits-based subscription starting at $14.99 per month.
While her production company aims to lead the AI charge in Hollywood, Lyonne said it’s important to remember the human aspect of tech. With so many countless possibilities for AI’s uses, she noted it can at least be used to make human lives better, and not purely for “cutting costs.”
“We need human beings in AI so that the tools don’t run us,” she said.
Equifax (NYSE: EFX) secured 27 patents in the second half of 2025, bringing the total number of patents secured for the year to 62. Twenty of these patents support the company’s approach to artificial intelligence, complementing its EFX.AI strategy and “helping to accelerate the development of cloud-based, AI-enabled solutions that help to create financial opportunities for consumers.”
As of Nov 2025, Equifax has nearly “700 issued or pending patents spanning 15 countries, encompassing distinctive techniques to accelerate the use of AI, including machine learning for data & analytics and risk modeling.”
Over 320 of the organization’s pending and approved patents reportedly support its approach “to responsible AI, with many of these patented AI techniques used in customer-facing solutions.”
The custom-built Equifax Cloud is a technology and security infrastructure that continues to set the company apart in the industry.
Backed by approximately $3 billion investment in security and technology, The Equifax Cloud and custom data fabric “enable the organization to drive AI innovation and maximize EFX.AI capabilities for faster solution implementation, new product innovation, cloud-native model deployment and expedited consumer decisioning.”
The latest technology and innovation covered by the most recent Equifax patents include:
Production-Ready Attributes Creation and Management for Software Development (Australia) – This patent describes features of the Equifax Ignite® and InterConnect® platforms that allow for more effective attribute management, allowing customers to quickly move from analytics to production. It describes a computing system that uses attribute templates in a production-reading programming language to determine and generate attribute definitions. These attribute definitions are more easily deployed to the production environment and can also be monitored more effectively to ensure performance.
Consolidation of Data Sources for Expedited Validation of Risk Assessment Data (U.S.) – This patent consolidates and validates user-provided data and data from financial institutions through a single interface. This instant, combined validation aims to overcome slow, traditional data checks, accelerating decision-making. This technology can support next generation OnlyEquifax solutions like Income Qualify, which delivers income and employment insights from The Work Number® alongside the Equifax credit report to mortgage lenders during the prequalification and pre-approval phase, offering earlier visibility into an applicant’s financial health.Updating Attribute Data Structures to Indicate
Trends in Attribute Data Provided to Automated Modeling Systems (European Patent Office) – This patent describes a system that enhances automated prediction models, such as those for risk or credit assessment, by addressing the limitations of using only static data. It achieves this by creating “trended attributes” from Equifax historical data, capturing behavioral patterns over time.
Machine-Learning Techniques for Risk Assessment Based on Multiple Data Sources (U.S.) – This patent describes a machine-learning system that creates a more accurate and complete “integrated risk score” by combining traditional and alternative data, data not historically contained in traditional credit reports—including rental, utility, and telecom payments. This system enables Equifax to provide a more comprehensive and equitable risk evaluation and improve decision-making. Solutions like Financial Durability Measures provide more insight into a household’s likely financial resilience.
Secure Online Access Control to Prevent Identification Information Misuse (Australia) – This patent describes a central security system for managing and protecting digital resources, aiming to prevent online fraud. It creates a “secure resource management system” that acts as a trusted record keeper, storing permanent records of each resource and its transaction history. This technology can support solutions like Australia’s Fraud Detection and Prevention platform, giving Equifax customers the ability to verify ownership before granting access, ensuring secure resource transfers and preventing fraudulent activity.
Device-Agnostic Access Control Techniques (European Patent Office) – This patent describes a smart, “device-agnostic” security system that improves user experience by creating a unique “behavioral fingerprint,” called a “historical entity vector,” for each legitimate user. This patented technology, which can be used in Equifax UK Identity Verification & Fraud Prevention solutions, is able to compare current authentication data to the historical fingerprint, enabling the system to recognize the real user on a new device, ensuring secure, seamless access to interactive websites and apps.
At Equifax, they believe knowledge drives progress.
As a global data, analytics, and technology company, they play an essential role in the global economy by “helping FIs, companies, employers, and government agencies make critical decisions.”
Their blend of data, analytics, and cloud tech “drives insights to power decisions to move people forward.”
Headquartered in Atlanta and supported by employees worldwide, Equifax operates or has investments in “countries in North America, Central and South America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region.”
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Advertising Disclosure: When you buy something by clicking links within this article, we may earn a small commission, but it never affects the products or services we recommend. If you’ve visited a thrift shop or estate sale lately, you’ve probably noticed a few shoppers who look less like casual browsers and more like focused workers. These folks are probably professional resellers or…
The Justice Department released thousands of files Friday about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the incomplete document dump did not break significant ground about the long-running criminal investigations of the financier or his ties to wealthy and powerful individuals.
The files included photographs of famous people who spent time with Epstein in the years before he came under suspicion, including some candid snapshots of Bill Clinton, who flew on Epstein’s jet and invited him to the White House in the years before the financier was accused of wrongdoing. But there was almost no material related to another old Epstein friend, President Donald Trump, aside from a few well-known images, sparing the White House from having to confront fresh questions about a relationship the administration has tried in vain to minimize.
The records, consisting largely of pictures but also including call logs, grand jury testimony, interview transcripts and other documents, arrived amid extraordinary anticipation that they might offer the most detailed look yet at nearly two decades worth of government scrutiny of Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women and underage girls. Yet the release, replete with redactions, seemed unlikely to satisfy the clamor for information given how many records had yet to be released and because some of the materials had already been made public.
Democrats and some Republicans seized on the limited release to accuse the Justice Department of failing to meet a congressionally set deadline to produce the files, while White House officials on social media gleefully promoted a photo of Clinton in a hot tub with a woman with a blacked-out face. The Trump administration touted the release as proof of its commitment to transparency, ignoring that the Justice Department just months ago said no more files would be released. Congress then passed a law mandating it.
In a letter to Congress, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote that the Justice Department was continuing to review files in its possession, was withholding some documents under exemptions meant to protect victims and expected additional disclosures by the end of the year.
Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years before the two had a falling-out, tried for months to keep the records sealed.
But bowing to political pressure from fellow Republicans, Trump last month signed a bill giving the Justice Department 30 days to release most of its files and communications related to Epstein, including information about the investigation into his death in a federal jail. The law set a deadline for Friday.
Limited details about Trump
Trump is hardly glimpsed in the files, with the small number of photos of him appearing to have been in the public domain for decades. Those include two in which Trump and Epstein are posing with now-first lady Melania Trump in February 2000 at an event at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Trump’s connection to Epstein is well-documented, but he has sought to distance himself from his former friend. He has said he cut off ties with Epstein after the financier hired young female employees from Mar-a-Lago and has repeatedly denied knowledge of his crimes.
The FBI and Justice Department abruptly announced in July that they would not be releasing any additional records, a decision that was supported by Trump. But the president reversed course once it became clear that congressional action was inevitable. He insisted the Epstein matter had become a distraction to the Republican agenda and releasing the records was the best way to move on.
The White House, meanwhile, has moved to shift focus away from Trump’s ties to Epstein, with Attorney General Pam Bondi last month saying that she had ordered a federal prosecutor to investigate Epstein’s connections to Trump’s political foes, including Clinton.
Neither Trump nor Clinton has ever been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and the mere inclusion of someone’s name in the files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.
Among other prominent Epstein contacts is the former Prince Andrew, who appears in a photograph released Friday wearing a tuxedo and lying on the laps of what appear to be several women who are seated, dressed in formalwear. Pop star Michael Jackson also appears in multiple photos, including one showing him standing next to a smiling Epstein.
New photos of Clinton
Unlike Trump, Clinton is featured prominently in the files, though the records included no explanation of how the photographs of the former president related to any investigation or the context surrounding them.
Some photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another shows him in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was also redacted. He is also seen in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.
This undated, redacted photo released by the U.S. Department of Justice shows Ghislaine Maxwell and former President Bill Clinton swimming with an unknown person.
U.S. Department of Justice via AP
Senior Trump White House aides took to X to promote the Clinton photos.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote “Oh my!” and added a shocked face emoji in response to a photo of Clinton in the hot tub.
“They can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton,” Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña said in a statement.
“There are two types of people here,” he said. “The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships after that. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”
The Epstein investigations
After nearly two decades of court action, a voluminous number of Epstein records had already been public before Friday, including flight logs, address books, email correspondence, police reports, grand jury records, courtroom testimony and deposition transcripts.
Besides public curiosity about whether any of Epstein’s associates knew about or participated in the abuse, Epstein’s accusers have also sought answers about why federal authorities shut down their initial investigation into the allegations in 2008.
“Just put out the files,” said Marina Lacerda, who says she survived sexual assault by Epstein. “And stop redacting names that don’t need to be redacted.”
One of the few revelations in the documents was a copy of the earliest known concern about Epstein’s behavior — a report taken by the FBI of a woman in 1996 who believed photos and negatives she had taken of her 12-year-old and 16-year-old sisters for a personal art project had been stolen by Epstein. The documents don’t show what, if anything, the agency did with that complaint.
Police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein in 2005 after the family of a 14-year-old girl reported being molested at his mansion. The FBI joined the investigation. Authorities gathered testimony from multiple underage girls who said they’d been hired to give Epstein sexual massages.
Ultimately, prosecutors gave Epstein a deal that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution. He pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges involving someone under age 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.
Epstein’s accusers spent years in civil litigation trying to get that plea deal set aside. One of those women, Virginia Giuffre, accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters, starting at age 17, with other men, including billionaires, famous academics, politicians and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Britain’s Prince Andrew.
Mountbatten-Windsor denied ever having sex with Giuffre, but King Charles III stripped him of his royal titles this year.
Prosecutors never brought charges in connection with Giuffre’s claims, but her account fueled conspiracy theories about supposed government plots to protect the powerful. Giuffre died by suicide in April.
Federal prosecutors in New York brought new sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest. Prosecutors then charged Maxwell, his longtime confidant, with recruiting underage girls for Epstein to abuse. She was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Red Rocks Credit Union teamed up with Interface.ai to develop an AI agent for the credit union’s call center. Since the launch of Roxie, the credit union’s AI agent, just over two weeks ago, the agent has handled 10% of customer calls end-to-end, Chief Executive Darius Wise told FinAi News. Although Roxie is handling call volume, the $330 million, Denver-based credit union does […]
