Richard Cordray, director of the lately embattled Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, addressed a hall packed with mortgage bankers at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston yesterday morning.

The audience was not given the opportunity to respond to Cordray or ask questions.

In his speech, Cordray said his office and MBA members have “each been working in our own ways to revive a mortgage industry that was devastated by the financial crisis.”

He outlined the mortgage crisis and the slow, uneven and nearly complete recovery, but also took note of lingering issues.

“I agree with Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt that the market is not yet supporting access to credit for the full spectrum of creditworthy borrowers; average credit scores for home purchase loans are still above the levels historically viewed as normal from past years,” he said.

Cordray said the lending industry has improved and that the CFPB played a large role in that improvement.

“We know that sometimes you are focused only on one side of the equation, namely the compliance costs you have incurred in implementing the rules we issued,” he said. “That is a fact, but it is an inevitable one. No economic sector that precipitates a global financial meltdown could possibly expect to escape far-reaching reforms, as the Congress so dictated.”

He spoke at length about the TRID “Know Before You Owe” rule and its successful first year in effect; the feedback his office has received on the rule has been largely positive. The CFPB will continue to solicit input for improvement from the lending industry with regard to both TRID and the new HMDA reporting requirements.

“We recognize this [the expanded HMDA reporting requirements] means yet another implementation process for mortgage lenders, so we set a generous lead time to implement the rule,” he said. “For most of it, the effective date is January 2018, which means the first submission of new data is not due to the bureau until March 2019.”

Cordray put off addressing the biggest of the elephants in the room, PHH’s successful suit vacating the $103 million fine against it and the finding that the very structure of the CFPB is unconstitutional, until the end of his address. He acknowledged the loss, saying “The case is not final at this point; the bureau has made clear that it respectfully disagrees with the panel’s decision and is considering its options for seeking further review.”

Cordray also said the agency would continue to apply RESPA as it has done in the past.