Holiday Surprise from NYS DFS

I am not sure how many people make their living or are employed by the title insurance industry in the State of New York, but every one of us is now aware that a regulatory change has happened. It is profoundly baffling, therefore, that none of us know exactly what that change is or how to prepare for it.

New York State Department of Financial Services has announced that they have a “Holiday Surprise” for the real estate community. For the past two and a half years, out regulators have been considering regulations that are known as Proposed Regulation 206 and Proposed Regulation 208.

The New York State Land Title Association reported yesterday, and I quote:

“The DFS Chief of Staff made a number of "courtesy calls" late yesterday afternoon to the entities involved with the SAPA regulatory process.

Scott Wexler was called as the contact person for NYSLTA and Scott relayed to me the content of the DFS call which is as follows:

DFS has filed regulations with the Department of State, which will be published in the Oct 18 State Register.

Reg 206 will take effect immediately upon publication.

Reg 208 takes effect 60 days from Oct 18.

The Department thanked the Association for its participation.

With Scott's assistance we can conclude the published regs will be very very close to the draft regs. We know this because there is no comment period.

Scott did ask if it were possible to see the regs so "we could be in compliance" on Day 1 - no luck.

Yes – you read that right. The DFS has filed new regulations with the Department of State, and for reasons that we cannot begin to understand, they are unwilling to share the contents of those regulations with anyone.

For the text of the “proposed” regulations (which are the only basis on which we can guess what the actual regulations will entail), just click the hyperlinks below.

http://www.dfs.ny.gov/insurance/r_prop/rp208text.pdf

http://www.dfs.ny.gov/insurance/r_prop/rp_consolidated_text.pdf