We do not believe that the payments from the bank purchasing your loans would be includable in the points and fees calculation in this situation. The Regulation Z mortgage rules define “points and fees” to include “compensation paid directly or indirectly by a consumer or creditor to a loan originator . . . .” 12 CFR 1026.32(b)(1)(ii). Such compensation should be included in the points and fees calculation only if a consumer or a creditor pays compensation to the loan originator. In this situation, we view your institution as being the “loan originator,” a term that includes the party that takes an initial loan application, even if it does not finance the transaction out of its own resources. 12 CFR 1026.36(a)(1).

Here, the fee you receive is not paid by a consumer or by a creditor. Instead, the source of the fee is the secondary market purchaser of the loan and the bank that purchases the loans from your institution. The consumer is not paying the fee, either directly or indirectly — as you noted, the source of the fee is the secondary market purchaser of the loan. Nor is the creditor paying a fee, as we do not view the bank paying the fee as the creditor in these transactions. Regulation Z defines “creditor” as the “person . . . to whom the obligation is initially payable, either on the face of the note or contract, or by agreement when there is no note or contract.” 12 CFR 1026.2(a)(17)(i). Because the mortgages that your institution originates are initially payable to your institution, we would view your institution as the creditor, not the correspondent bank. Because the fees you describe are not paid by a consumer or by the creditor, we would not include them in the points and fees calculation.