As the Home Affordable Refinance Program ushers in its last year, the Federal Housing Finance Agency has charged Fannie and Freddie with developing an alternative to the popular refinance program created in 2009 to help underwater borrowers. Originally set to end in December 2013, the HARP program has been extended twice and will be put to rest on Dec. 31, 2016. At that time, the FHFA said the GSEs should have a high loan-to-value ratio refinance program in place and ready to kick off in January 2017. The FHFA’s 2016 scorecard for the GSEs directed Fannie and Freddie to “finalize post-crisis loss mitigation options for borrowers, including loan modifications, and develop an implementation plan and timeline.”
Four of the top five ABS issuers in 2015 were closely linked to the auto industry, including the most productive issuer in the market, Ford Motor Credit.
An ugly reality for land owners, mortgage lenders and others: the National Flood Insurance Program is currently $23 billion in debt and in dire need of reform.
New issuance of non-mortgage ABS fell 6.6 percent last year even though the market’s biggest segment pushed to a new post-crash high, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. A total of $173.05 billion of non-mortgage ABS were issued in 2015, the second-highest annual output since 2008. The direction, however, was less encouraging. New issuance tumbled 17.1 percent from the third to the fourth quarter, sinking to $30.69 billion – the lowest three-month total in over three years. But with record sales in the U.S. auto industry, securitization of vehicle-finance contracts increased...[Includes two data tables]
The average daily trading volume for agency MBS fell to a yearly low of $149.2 billion in December, as trading desks from coast to coast continued to assess how to make money in what’s become a business of tight profit margins. Late this week, Barclays Bank unveiled a massive restructuring of its MBS and whole-loan trading business, cutting the number of employees in the division – including traders – down to 50 from roughly 100. As a structural matter, the bank is moving...
About a month after risk-retention requirements took effect for newly issued non-agency MBS, industry participants continue to work on complying with the standards set by the Dodd-Frank Act. Non-agency MBS issued on Dec. 24, 2015, and beyond are subject to risk-retention standards. The standards will apply to other MBS and ABS asset types for deals issued on and after Dec. 24 of this year. The first jumbo MBS subject to risk-retention requirements is scheduled...
Issuers of MBS and ABS continue to address compliance issues with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s so-called Regulation AB2. Meanwhile, the Structured Finance Industry Group has urged the SEC to continue to delay further action on disclosure proposals that remain outstanding. In August 2014, the SEC published a final rule setting a variety of disclosure requirements for the structured finance market. Issuers of publicly registered MBS and ABS were required to comply with rules, forms and disclosures established by Reg AB2 by Nov. 23, 2015. Asset-level disclosure requirements will take effect Nov. 23 of this year. During a webinar hosted by the law firm of Mayer Brown late last week, Stuart Litwin, a partner at the law firm, said...
Goldman Sachs last week announced it has agreed to a $5.1 billion settlement, the largest regulatory penalty in the firm’s history, concluding an investigation brought by the Residential MBS Working Group of the U.S. Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. The agreement in principle is poised to resolve actual and potential civil claims by the U.S. Department of Justice, the New York and Illinois attorneys general, the National Credit Union Administration (as conservator for several failed credit unions) and the Federal Home Loan Banks of Chicago and Seattle. At issue are...
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