The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hasn’t marked up a bill in more than a year, but Democrats and Republicans on the panel pushed this week to begin the process of reforming the government-sponsored enterprises. “I think the time is right to address this issue and move it forward,” Sen. Jon Tester, D-MT, said this week at a hearing by the committee. “I think there are folks on both sides of the aisle that want to quit playing with this like a political football and ...

Bank of America agreed this week to pay $500 million to settle lawsuits from investors in non-agency mortgage-backed securities issued by Countrywide Financial in 2005 through 2007. If it receives judicial approval, the settlement on about $15.0 billion in non-agency MBS will be the largest-ever non-agency MBS class-action recovery. “After five years of hard-fought litigation, this record-breaking recovery is a tremendous result for MBS investors misled by Countrywide and ...

Non-agency jumbo mortgage-backed securities issued by Redwood Trust in 2010 and 2011 have been subject to scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission in recent months. The SEC looked into Regulation AB compliance issues on the deals, largely seeking increased disclosures. The SEC’s inquiries generally related to deal participants other than Redwood. And in some cases, the SEC sought disclosures related to actions beyond the firms’ participation in non-agency MBS issuance ...

“The policy mix is very much weighted on the side of not lending, or at least not underwriting anything but a prime loan,” according to Chris Whalen, an executive vice president and managing director at Carrington Investment Services. Whalen and others spoke last week at a panel hosted by the American Enterprise Institute. The industry analysts said actions by federal regulators are limiting issuance of non-agency mortgage-backed securities. Tom Zimmerman, a managing director at UBS, said ...

The Obama administration’s 2014 budget proposal calls for a Home Affordable Refinance Program for non-agency borrowers, although prospects for getting legislation through Congress remain slim. The proposed budget included a small section entitled “finish the task on universal refinancing for responsible homeowners.” The section noted that the Obama administration worked with the government-sponsored enterprises in 2012 to double the number of HARP refinances for GSE borrowers with negative equity ...

A former managing director and global head of structured credit in the investment banking division of Credit Suisse Group pled guilty last week to a scheme to hide losses on non-agency mortgage-backed securities. Kareem Serageldin faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum fine of the greater of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense. The Department of Justice had charged Serageldin with fraudulently inflating the prices of non-agency MBS and ... [Includes four briefs]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development this week issued guidance that spells out procedures for demanding indemnification from lenders participating in the agency’s Lenders Insurance (LI) program for loans deemed ineligible for FHA insurance. The guidance (Mortgagee Letter 2013-10) implements regulation that HUD finalized in January 2012. Indemnification for defective LI loans became even more important for the FHA after an independent actuarial audit in November revealed a negative capital reserve ratio and that a taxpayer bailout seemed imminent. Compliance experts warned that, with the policy changes, the more than ...

Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan this week reiterated his agency’s request for additional legislative authority to regulate the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program by mortgagee letter so that much-needed changes can be implemented immediately. Rather than go through the tedious legislative process of amending HECM legislation to improve the program and reduce HECM losses, expanding HUD’s authority would enable the department to undertake immediate reforms, such as restricting lump sum payments, requiring financial assessments of HECM applicants and requiring borrowers to ...

Ginnie Mae is seeking feedback from dealers, issuers and investors about whether to continue to maintain two separate mortgage-backed securities programs or to consolidate them under a single security. Comments are also being sought on other possible options. Bloomberg.com recently reported that Ginnie Mae sent out questionnaires to Wall Street broker-dealers for their input on the future of both the Ginnie Mae I and Ginnie Mae II MBS programs. The agency has been considering whether it should merge the programs for some time. The Ginnie Mae I single-issuer pool program with stringent pooling requirements began in ...

The non-agency MBS market produced $8.33 billion in new transactions during the first quarter of 2013, its strongest issuance in nearly two years, and did so the old-fashioned way by relying heavily on “new” prime jumbo mortgages. The first three months of 2013 saw nearly a threefold increase in non-agency MBS issuance compared to the previous quarter and was 65.1 percent ahead of the pace set in 2012, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. Although over half the issuance volume was in re-securitizations and deals backed by servicer advances, the most encouraging sign was the continued rebound in prime jumbo MBS production. Redwood Trust made good...[Includes three data charts]