Recent remarks by Craig Phillips, counselor to the secretary of the Treasury Department, suggest that the Trump administration supports proposals to reduce regulatory burdens in the MBS and ABS markets. The agency is in the process of finding regulations that can be “clarified, modified or tailored” to help boost the housing market. “We believe it’s time to assess whether regulatory requirements have unnecessarily tightened the credit box for new originations,” Phillips said at a credit-risk transfer symposium in New York City. “Regulatory requirements have also contributed to increased cost in servicing. Capital and liquidity standards have put private-label securitization at a disadvantage.” The Structured Finance Industry Group noted...

Credit Suisse was a major issuer of post-crisis jumbo MBS, but hasn’t come to market with a jumbo deal since the fourth quarter of 2015.

To assess the effectiveness of the rule in meeting the agency’s goals, the CFPB will examine the impact of major provisions of the measure on a set of consumer outcomes, including mortgage costs…

A Manhattan appeals court raised the burden of proof for Ambac Assurance, which seeks to recover monetary damages from Bank of America in an insurance case involving $1.68 billion in securities backed by high-risk mortgages from now-defunct Countrywide Home Loans. Attorneys with Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas said a panel of the Appellate Division, First Judicial Department, ruled that Ambac may not use New York insurance law as the sole basis for arguing that it does not have to prove certain elements of fraud in its claims against BofA. The court also barred Ambac from using the statute to recover damages. The court held...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both announced new re-performing loan sale transactions this month as the two government-sponsored enterprises look for ways to shed illiquid assets. Fannie began marketing its first re-performing loan sale back in November to help reduce its balance sheet. The program continues to gain more traction with each sale. That first sale totaled $789.2 million in unpaid principal balance. Fannie has since announced...

Insurance policies are the second-largest form of the government-sponsored enterprises’ credit-risk transfer but Fannie Mae’s Credit Insurance Risk Transfer (CIRT) program and Freddie Mac’s Agency Credit Insurance Structure (ACIS) have a few stark differences. One of the primary differences in the two is that Freddie has retained large portions of the tranches from its popular Structured Avenue Credit Risk deals (STACR), and used the ACIS program as a way to transfer some of the remaining risk, up to the 5 percent retention limit, note analysts at Wells Fargo Securities in a recent report. With ACIS coverage tied to companion STACR deals, it’s...

In years past, RPM has been a selective buyer of mostly smaller shops.

Large servicers of jumbo mortgages continued to increase their holdings in the first quarter of 2017, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. And delinquency performance improved on already low levels. The unpaid principal balance of jumbo mortgages serviced by a group of 30 companies hit $935.70 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2017, up 1.6 percent from the previous quarter and up 8.4 percent ... [Includes one data chart]

Participants in the non-agency mortgage-backed security market and banks have proposed different ways of how to address debt-to-income ratio standards for qualified mortgages. The Structured Finance Industry Group wants the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to consider speeding the timeline for ending the so-called QM patch, while the American Bankers Association seeks a permanent fix for the DTI issue. The debate centers on the 43.0 percent DTI ratio standard for QMs ...

Data regarding subprime mortgages outstanding, delinquencies and loss mitigation activity are getting more difficult to track as the market has essentially been in runoff mode since 2009.Few servicers report on their subprime portfolios, a key delinquency data series was recently discontinued and details on loan modifications are lagging. Some $247.0 billion of subprime mortgages were outstanding as of the end of the first quarter of 2017 ... [Includes one data chart]