The Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of Inspector General said the FHFA did not make sure that Freddie Mac’s plans to address cybersecurity deficiencies were sufficient. Instead, the agency questionably closed the matter requiring attention (MRA) after deciding on its own that the GSE had completed its planned remedial actions.This raised a red flag with the OIG, which said when an MRA is issued, the FHFA requires the GSE to provide a remedial plan that includes specific milestones that take into consideration the complexity of the issue and the urgency regarding the correction.

Fannie Mae last month implemented changes to its Desktop Underwriter program following a surge in acquisition mortgages with high debt-to-income ratios that caused an uproar with some private mortgage insurers. In July 2017, the GSE revised its underwriting guidelines to accept DTI ratios over 45 percent without requiring lenders to show compensating factors. As previously reported by Inside The GSEs, the change led to a surge in high-DTI activity in the second half of 2017. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitized $52.90 billion of mortgages with DTI ratios ranging from 46 percent to 50 percent, a 72.6 percent increase from the first six months of the year.

The Servicing Marketplace launched last year by Fannie Mae has had a good response so far. It was created to connect servicers and sellers during transfers, and there are already talks of enhancements in the near future.The program was in a pilot phase for the bulk of 2017, officially kicking off in December. The GSE designed the platform to support co-issue transactions, bringing sellers and servicers together to deliver pricing certainty and transparency, as well as efficiency. Loans delivered under whole loan servicing-released commitments taken on or after Dec. 4, 2017, are bifurcated if sellers participate in Fannie’s servicing execution tool or the servicing marketplace.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is proposing to amend its regulations on the responsibility of the board, directors, corporate practices, and corporate governances for the GSEs and Federal Home Loan Banks. It also would apply the FHLB strategic business plans to Fannie and Freddie. This means that the GSEs’ boards would have a strategic business plan in effect at all times, which describes how the regulated entity will achieve its statutory purposes. Moreover, there’d be a provision that requires each GSE board to review the strategic plans annually, re-adopt it once every three years, at minimum, and...

Fannie Mae Announces New Board Member. Christopher Herbert was elected as a director on the company’s board of directors. The GSE noted that he has extensive experience relating to housing policy and urban development. He’s been managing director for Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies since January 2015. The Final Nail in the GSE Reform Coffin: Creation of the $3B Capital Buffer? Although GSE reform appears to be dead in the current Congress, Fitch Ratings issued a report Tuesday predicting that MBS guarantors created in the future to replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be on solid ground financially. As for why GSE reform failed, Fitch contends...

The upside for private MIs is that their purchase business started off 2018 at a more robust level than last year…

Wertheimer testified that during her tenure, the FHFA-OIG has issued 85 reports and made 117 recommendations to address supervisory shortcomings.

Fannie Mae last month tweaked its underwriting system to account for the greater risk in loans with high debt-to-income ratios.

With GSE reform all but dead, rumors about possible administrative changes abound...

Fitch said the $3 billion reserve should be sufficient to cover income volatility during “the normal course of business, as seen when interest-rate volatility results in valuation adjustments within the GSEs’ derivative portfolios.”