Bosch, whose firm helps troubled borrowers, worried that the settlement might not reach the affected borrowers, many of whom have lost their homes and continue to hide from bill collectors.

“Even when attorneys are involved, people have gone into hiding, because they have collection calls all the time. They’re not leaving forwarding addresses,” he said. “I’d say 50 percent of these people never gave forwarding addresses."

Also on Monday, Bank of America announced a separate settlement in which it will pay mortgage giant Fannie Mae $3.6 billion and buy back more than 30,000 loans to resolve a long-running dispute between the two. The Charlotte, N.C.,-based bank will pay more than $10 billion in total.

The settlement covers mortgages totaling about $1.4 trillion originated primarily by Countrywide Financial Corp. and sold to Fannie Mae from 2000 to 2008.

After they started to go sour, Fannie Mae sought to force Bank of America – which bought Countrywide in 2008 – to buy them back, claiming that the bank had misrepresented the quality of the loans. The two battled over the loans for at least a year.

A large portion of the settlement will be paid out of the bank’s reserves. The agreements will cut into Bank of America’s fourth-quarter earnings by about $2.7 billion, the bank said.

Fannie Mae said the 30,000 loans that Bank of America was repurchasing had the potential “to cause significant future losses.” Fannie is still under conservatorship by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Andrew Dunn of The Charlotte Observer contributed to this report from Charlotte, N.C.