Risk weights established by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision for holdings of securitized assets won’t have much of an impact on U.S. banks, according to analysts at Barclays Capital. It’s unclear which banks the risk weights will be applied to and many U.S. banks have transitioned to similar methods to evaluate capital requirements for their holdings of MBS and ABS. The BCBS issued a revised framework for calculating risk weights on banks’ securitization exposures in December. The framework is set to take effect in certain countries beginning in 2018. It was issued to address concerns that banks were holding insufficient capital for certain securitized assets and to reduce the reliance on external ratings to derive securitization risk weights. Barclays said...

The U.S. Supreme Court this week denied a petition by major banks to reject a lower court decision to allow a National Credit Union Administration MBS lawsuit to go forward. The SCOTUS chose not to hear the case, a lawsuit filed by the NCUA to recover damages suffered by five now-defunct federal credit unions as a result of investments in non-agency MBS sold by the banks. The suit is...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency will unveil nonbank capital guidelines for servicers by mid-year. Also on the docket: Changes to loan level price adjustments..

Fourth-quarter earnings reports from the four megabanks in the mortgage industry suggest that loan production activity and mortgage banking income fell slightly at the end of 2014. On a combined basis, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup originated $88.7 billion in home mortgages during the fourth quarter of 2014, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports released this week. That total was down ...

New single-family business at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac declined 2.1 percent during the fourth quarter of 2014, but you can’t blame it on mortgage brokers. The two government-sponsored enterprises securitized $20.53 billion of broker loans over the final three months of the year, up 3.7 percent from the third quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of loan-level mortgage-backed securities data. That gave broker loans a ... [Includes one data chart]

Home purchase borrowers, including first-time homebuyers, rely more on their lender or mortgage broker than anyone else as a source of information about mortgages, according to a new government survey on consumers’ mortgage shopping experience. Conducted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the survey found that an estimated 70 percent of home-purchase borrowers chose their lender or broker before deciding on the type of loan ...

A number of factors, including looser underwriting standards, low interest rates and low oil prices, could help bolster the housing sector in 2015, according to industry analysts. However, total mortgage originations are still expected to decline this year compared with 2014, and consumer confidence toward the housing market is lagging optimism about the broader economy. Analysts at Fitch Ratings recently pointed to a “confluence of events” that could ...

The executive suites of mortgage banking firms are well represented by members of the “baby boom” generation who aren’t getting any younger. And therein lies a potential problem. “Millennials certainly appear to be under-represented in the mortgage industry, while members of the baby boom and Gen X generations appear to be over-represented,” said Glen Corso, executive director of Community Mortgage Lenders of America. The way Corso sees it ...

If 2015 is anything like 2014, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be getting over half of their single-family business from nonbanks by the end of the year. A new Inside The GSEs analysis of loan-level mortgage-backed securities data reveals that nonbanks accounted for 44.8 percent of Fannie/Freddie MBS issued in the fourth quarter of 2014. That was up from a nonbank share of 37.2 percent during the fourth quarter of 2013 and just 28.1 percent back in the first quarter of that year. As a group, nonbank sellers increased their total GSE sales by 2.9 percent from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, while the overall market declined by 2.1 percent. The biggest ... [with two exclusive charts] ...

This year could be a watershed moment for mortgage lending as industry representatives feel their way around a brand new approach to closing disclosures, thanks to the pending implementation of the integrated disclosure rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As a result, it’s likely that more lenders will assume greater control over the closing process as well as the end product. The new closing form is “unlike anything the industry has seen before ...