by Michelle R. Rodriguez, Esq.
Woodland Hills Mortgage

According to experts in the mortgage banking industry, in March, 2017, the California Department of Business Oversight (“DBO”) closed down the portal for submitting annual reports the day after the reports were due, so that companies trying to file the report late were unable to do so. The DBO then began to send out notices to the companies who had not submitted a report, of the DBO’s intent to revoke the companies’ licenses due to their failure to submit the report. The companies who were late submitting the report had to call the DBO and plead their case for the DBO to activate the portal for them, so that they could submit the report late. To further complicate matters, some of the companies had not kept their mailing addresses updated with the DBO, and therefore did not receive the “intent to revoke” notices. Incidentally, failing to update a CFL company’s address with the DBO is a license violation. The DBO has indicated that they plan on continuing their hard line stance on late filing of the annual reports for the foreseeable future. CFL lenders and others who must submit annual reports to the DBO should keep this in mind when planning their annual report submissions.