According to figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance, Provident ranks eighth nationwide among all table-funders, based on first quarter 2015 production.
Most of the changes are in the portion earmarked for direct endorsement lenders, which often have been the target of False Claims Act lawsuits filed by the Department of Justice...
“These are serious loan officers,” he noted. Just how serious? According to the show’s website, some of the top producing LOs in attendance earn between $500,000 and $5 million…
A new analysis by an economist at the Federal Reserve suggests that the Dodd-Frank Act’s risk-retention requirements won’t adequately address the issues that caused the structured finance market to essentially freeze in 2007. A paper by Alyssa Anderson suggests a deposit insurance-like agreement between investors and private market firms or the government would better protect investors from losses and reduce ambiguity. She stressed that increased uncertainty about securities, the potential length and depth of a downturn and possible government intervention contribute to investors shying away from securitization markets. “Given the presence of ambiguity, the market freeze can persist...
A federal appeals court in Chicago has set aside a $2.46 billion judgment against HSBC’s Household International unit and three of its top executives and ordered a new trial. Investors won the judgment in 2009 based on charges that the bank and its top executives misled them about its mortgage lending practices. The price of the stocks subsequently collapsed as the subprime mortgage market unraveled, causing huge investor losses. The class-action lawsuit alleged...
The Chicago Federal Home Loan Bank hopes to issue its very first Ginnie Mae MBS by the third quarter, and if all goes well certain other FHLBanks may become issuers as well. In a recent speech, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt noted the interest in the program, saying the agency has “approved the requests of several other FHLBanks to participate.” Watt did not identify...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have found deep investor appetite for credit-risk transfer transactions, but their exploration of new structures may not get to the front-end tradeoff of deeper mortgage insurance for reduced MBS guaranty fees. During a panel session at last week’s secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association, Kevin Palmer, a Freddie vice president, said the government-sponsored enterprises launched their credit-risk transfers to reduce taxpayer exposure and distribute risk more broadly in the mortgage finance system. Fannie and Freddie have...
Although no “large” mortgage companies have changed hands in quite some time, investor interest in small to medium-sized lenders remains strong as banks, private-equity funds and nonbanks continue to show their interest as buyers. Since last fall, at least 25 deals have been publicly disclosed, according to sales tracked by Inside Mortgage Finance, but none of the originators have been larger than $4 billion a year in production. According to interviews conducted over the past week with investment banking advisors, in the months ahead lenders that originate between $500 million to $2 billion a year are...
The New York regional office of the Securities and Exchange Commission has opened up a preliminary investigation into the use of “collection agents” by mortgage servicers, including Ocwen Financial. In a recent 10-Q filing, Ocwen said it received a letter in February from SEC staff “informing us that it was conducting an investigation relating to mortgage loan servicer use of collection agents, and it made a request for the voluntary production of documents and information.” In the filing, Ocwen provided...