As of June 30, 2013, the end of the third quarter of fiscal year 2013, the CFPB had received $323.2 million in transfers from the Federal Reserve, far below the $598 million the bureau is entitled to in funding under the Dodd-Frank Act, according to the CFPB’s latest financial update. Of the $308 million it spent, approximately $140.2 million was allocated to employee compensation and benefits for the 1,226 employees on board by the end of the quarter. Other than payroll expenses, the largest obligations for the quarter were...

Thursday, Sept. 12: Now that Richard Cordray is “street legal” as the confirmed director of the CFPB, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, has decided to invite him before the panel to testify on the bureau’s third semi-annual report to Congress, which was released back in late March and covers the period from July 1, 2012, to Dec. 31, 2012. “The director of the CFPB is required by law to appear before the committee on a semi-annual basis to deliver a report on the CFPB,” says a hearing notice on the...

The firm’s deal will be financed with bonds that are expected to have a five-year maturity, a floating-rate coupon and a rating from a major rating service.

Securities issuers won a major victory as the revised proposed rule on risk retention issued by federal regulators last week removed the requirement for a premium capture cash reserve account. The highly controversial PCCRA was replaced with a fair value calculation requirement for retention which regulators said will increase the value of retained risk compared with the original proposal. “The ASF is extremely pleased to see the elimination of the premium capture cash reserve account provisions from the re-proposed rule,” said Tom Deutsch, executive director of the American Securitization Forum. “The provisions would have completely eliminated the economic incentives of securitizers to issue residential MBS and commercial MBS.” The original proposal generally measured...

New issuance of agency single-family MBS fell in August to its lowest monthly total of the year, according to a new market analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae generated a total of $130.88 billion of new single-family MBS last month, down 9.3 percent from July. It was the lowest monthly production volume since December 2012. New issuance by the government-sponsored enterprises fluctuated sharply at that time as lenders jockeyed around rising guaranty fees and the implementation of more favorable reps and warranties policies. All three agencies saw...[Includes one data chart]

If the Federal Housing Finance Agency lowers loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac next year, Redwood Trust says it is ready, willing and able to pick up the slack. “If that happens, Redwood will step up and fund those loans, no problem,” said Mike McMahon, managing director of the real estate investment trust, the most active jumbo MBS issuer in the non-agency market. The executive told Inside MBS & ABS that he’s certain that Redwood would have plenty of company as well. “There will be little or no disruption in the market,” he said. According to McMahon, in 2012 lenders produced...

The GSEs continued to see solid increases in purchase-mortgage business, which increased by almost 7 percent from July to August. It was the fifth straight monthly gain for the two.

Revised risk-retention requirements proposed last week by federal regulators for certain non-mortgage ABS and commercial MBS are somewhat looser than the standards initially proposed in 2011. Perhaps most significantly, “blended pools” would be allowed for commercial mortgages, commercial real estate loans and auto loans, allowing issuers to mix qualifying loans and non-qualifying loans in the same security. Securitized loans that don’t meet qualifying underwriting standards will be subject to the 5 percent risk retention as required by the Dodd-Frank Act. Blended pools would be eligible for reduced risk retention, as low as 2.5 percent. “The agencies believe...

Last month, senior staff from the Senate Banking Committee met with various industry “stakeholders” – including trade associations, consumer groups and academics – to hear their thoughts on housing finance reform and the fate of the GSEs.

Standard & Poor’s this week threw another counterpunch against the federal government’s civil fraud lawsuit filed earlier this year, slamming the litigation as “retaliation” for the rating agency’s August 2011 downgrade of the country’s AAA credit rating. The Justice Department in February filed a $5.0 billion lawsuit accusing S&P of knowingly inflating its ratings in residential MBS and collateralized debt obligations to boost its revenue and market share in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. The filing in the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, CA, by S&P’s parent company McGraw-Hill Co. seeks...