The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced this week that it moved back the anticipated date of “release 2” of the common securitization platform in which both GSEs will use the security, to the second quarter of 2019, instead of 2018. In a progress report update, the FHFA said it decided to delay the project after an “extensive review” of lessons learned from the first release and progress on release 2. The agency said it needs more time for the development, testing, validation of controls, and governance necessary “to have the highest level of confidence that the implementation will be both smooth and successful.”

Small lending organizations, including the Community Home Lenders Association and Community Mortgage Lenders of America, urged the Federal Housing Finance Agency to suspend the upcoming Treasury sweep of GSE profits. After fourth-quarter earnings, the GSEs plan to pay the Treasury $20 billion per the preferred stock purchase agreement. A March 23 letter from CHLA, CMLA and six consumer and civil rights groups pled with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and specifically asked FHFA Director Mel Watt to “exercise its discretion under the preferred stock purchase agreement to suspend the dividend payment on their senior preferred stock this month.” The groups, like others in the industry, are concerned about the GSEs’ declining capital buffer that will plummet to zero on Jan. 1, 2018.

Moody’s Investors Service said GSE reform proposals could have unintended consequences on different market segments. In a report released this week it noted that there’s no shortage of proposals on the table and some may have a larger impact than planned. The impact of many would seem straightforward at a high level, according to the ratings firm, but they could have unintended consequences in practice. Proposals range from winding down the GSEs without an explicit replacement to winding them down and providing other entities with access to the federal catastrophic risk insurance, to re-privatizing them but with tighter regulations. The report looks at possible impacts from the broad range of reforms being proposed and the...

Former Freddie Mac employee Susan Wharton Gates recently released a book detailing the events leading up to the conservatorship and suggests that the industry stop looking for a “single scapegoat.” She argues in her book that while Freddie made plenty of mistakes, so did Wall Street, the regulators, the industry and homeowners. Wharton, an advocate of privatizing the GSEs, worked at Freddie for close to 20 years, most recently in public policy. She left the company in 2009 and said by giving a fuller account of what happened she hoped to help “light a fire” under policymakers who have stalled on reforming the GSEs.

For the 2017 examination cycle, the Federal Housing Finance Agency recently issued an advisory bulletin for new classifications of adverse findings for the GSEs and the Federal Home Loan Banks. Three designated classifications were established to help examiners define the issues more effectively with hopes of a faster remediation plan. When communicating adverse examination finds to the regulated entities and Office of Finance, the FHFA said the examiners will classify them as either “matters requiring attention, recommendations or violations.” MRAs are broken down into two separate categories: critical supervisory matters and deficiencies. The difference boils down to the nature and severity of the issues requiring corrective action, according to the bulletin.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency issued an interim rule last week that changed some of the components of its Freedom of Information Act regulation, including the fee categories. The interim rule gives notice about the circumstances in which the FHFA can extend its response time to the FOIA request and tells when it should notify the person requesting the information about their right to seek dispute resolution services. In the new FOIA rule, the agency is required to provide a minimum of 90 days for requestors to file an administrative appeal and must notify requesters about available dispute resolution services.

Perceived flaws in the current and proposed GSE credit-risk transfers are explored in a recent blog posting by Tim Howard, former Fannie Mae executive. He said that the GSE CRTs are too expensive and Fannie has too much first-loss exposure in its Connecticut Avenue Securities structure before it takes effect. Howard also said that because the risk-transfer tranches can prepay and amortize over time, they most likely won’t be outstanding long enough to absorb many of the losses that exceed the first-loss limit. As an example, Howard pointed to Fannie’s CAS prospectus, which shows no losses transferred to investors in more than 60 different scenarios of combined credit loss and prepayment rates...

MBA: Don’t Bet on GSE PSPA Change. Mortgage Bankers Association President Dave Stevens said this week he expects no movement by the Trump Treasury Department to modify the preferred stock purchase agreements governing the GSE bailouts that would allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to build retained capital. In an interview with IMFnews, Stevens – who has been in touch with the new administration on GSE reform – noted that the PSPAs do not necessarily require the payment of GSE dividends to Treasury on a quarterly basis. (A commitment fee payment may be required though.)Smaller trade groups – though not the MBA – have asked the Federal Housing Finance...

Sometime during the second quarter of 2019, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will begin issuing the new uniform MBS, a completely fungible security that will replace the separate to-be-announced MBS currently issued by the two government-sponsored entities. The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced the deployment date for Release 2 of the single-security initiative this week. The new implementation date was moved back from the previous estimate of some time in 2018. The delay was...

The average daily trading volume in agency MBS declined to $202.4 billion in February, one of the worst readings over the past six months, according to figures compiled by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. In January, volume was a bit healthier at $229.8 billion, but that was before concerns began to mount about President Trump’s business agenda and how successful the new White House might be in rolling back regulations – financial and otherwise. As Inside MBS & ABS went to press this week, fears were...