The agency has picked Houlihan Lokey Capital to help it identify any financial, regulatory or market risks in its path to take Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of conservatorship.
Director Mark Calabria believes the revised structure and new hires will ensure FHFA continues to protect taxpayers from future bailouts and delivers on its obligation to create a competitive, liquid, efficient and resilient housing-finance market.
The liquid assets required of nonbank seller/servicers will rise from 3.5 basis points to 4.0 bps for the unpaid principal balance of their enterprise servicing.
SIFMA said the Ginnie-like market structure proposed by FHFA isn’t appropriate for conventional MBS. Moreover, the plan doesn’t address the continued misalignment of MBS issued by Fannie and Freddie.
Among the more interesting changes: the FHFA, for the first time ever, is asking GSE customers to hold capital against the dollar amount of Ginnie Mae mortgages they service: 35 basis points.
Since the launch of the single security, investors have increasingly turned to the use of specified pools rather than the TBA market, said Bob Ryan, a former FHFA official and one of the architects of the UMBS.