Private mortgage insurers aren’t backing down on their push for the GSEs to take on more front-end credit-risk transfers. During a recent House Financial Services subcommittee hearing, it was the private sector’s turn to discuss housing-finance reform. While lawmakers and panelists mostly agreed that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or their replacements, should tap multiple forms of credit-risk transfer, they disagreed on the type that future guarantors of mortgage-backed securities should utilize. Front-end transactions involve deeper coverage by private MIs. Advocates argued that with the more common back-end transactions, such as Fannie’s Connecticut Avenue Securities and Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk deals, the GSEs still hold a significant first-loss exposure.