Private mortgage insurers could have excess capital of nearly $2 billion by the end of 2019, analysts predict. A recent report from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods suggests the combination of private mortgage insurers’ high returns on equity and increasing use of reinsurance through insurance-linked note deals is creating the largesse. All of the nation’s six active MIs are publicly traded or are owned by a parent company that is. From 2016 through 2018, private MI’s insurance-in-force grew at ...

Ocwen Financial, the nation’s 12th largest servicer, has reached a civil settlement with the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General, to resolve a complaint filed by the state in 2017. As part of the agreement, Ocwen will make a $675,000 payment and provide relief to residential borrowers. The Massachusetts AG said the settlement involves total restitution of $2 million. The AG alleged that Ocwen committed “widespread mortgage servicing violations that increased Massachusetts ...

Ginnie Mae securitized $31.39 billion of FHA single-family purchase loans during the first quarter of 2019, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of agency mortgage-backed securities disclosures. Although that represented an 18.4% drop from the previous quarter, the FHA share of agency purchase loans edged up to 30.8% in early 2019 as other insurance programs saw larger declines. Private mortgage insurance remained ... [Includes one data chart.]

The fourth quarter of 2018 was one of the hardest times in recent memory for companies to generate a profit from their mortgage banking operations. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that only 44.0% of participants in its quarterly performance survey managed to report positive pre-tax net income for the final three months of last year. This appears to be the lowest share of firms producing positive results in many years, lower than the 54.2% share back in the first quarter of 2014 ...

The wholesale-broker channel appears to be gaining ground in the tightly competitive primary market in agency conforming mortgages. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis reveals that broker originations accounted for 12.5% of single-family loans pooled in agency mortgage-backed securities during the first quarter of 2019. That represented a substantial leap of 1.3 percentage points from the broker share of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae ... [Includes two data charts.]

A class-action lawsuit filed last month in the Southern District of New York accusing the largest authorized dealers in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt bonds of engaging in a systematic price-fixing scheme just got a little more interesting.

In October, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco reached a $3.6 million settlement with two former executives in its Washington, DC, office of legislative and regulatory affairs who claimed they were the victims of racial discrimination. There’s just one problem: Despite apparently reaching an agreement during mediation, the bank didn’t pay up.

Interim CEO Hugh Frater’s six-month odyssey at Fannie Mae just got longer last week when the board selected him to take the position permanently. His tenure became effective March 26, and he will remain on the board directors.

Fannie Mae last week announced it completed a multi-tranche credit-insurance-risk transfer transaction covering an astonishing $11.7 billion worth of multifamily loans held in portfolio.

There was a lot of kumbaya among industry experts last week during the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs’ two days of hearings on the housing-finance reform outlined last month by panel Chairman Mike Crapo, R-ID.