New regulatory requirements – including a controversial plan to assign ratings on a rotating basis – are encouraging firms to test the traditional approaches to rating MBS and ABS, but some observers say the reliance on an issuer-pay business model will be tough to change. New rating services are coming up with new ways to assess risk with more dynamic, ongoing reviews and more sources of information, and they’re less reliant on being fed information, said Stephen Kudenholdt, co-chair of the capital markets practice at SNR Denton. But the expectation that the market would shift to an investor-paid model clearly hasn’t...

The European debt crisis, following not far behind the global financial market meltdown of a few years ago, has put more pressure on the covered bond market, but analysts at the ABS East conference sponsored by Information Management Network said the sector is holding up well and gaining more acceptance in other countries. Covered bonds have not been completely unscathed, said Michael Durrer, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP. But Canada is starting up a covered bond market, Australia has recently enacted legislation, New Zealand has seen its first transactions and Belgium – the last European...

All the major components of the non-mortgage ABS market saw significant declines in new issuance during the third quarter, returning new production to the levels experienced for most of the past two years. Total ABS issuance fell 43.4 percent to $24.84 billion, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis. That followed a surge to $43.92 billion in the second quarter, that helped lift the total for the first nine months of 2011…

The chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the GSEs unveiled a bill late this week that seeks to drastically overhaul the secondary mortgage market – without the need for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.The Private Mortgage Market Act would create a heavily regulated mortgage-backed securities market consisting strictly of private entities functioning without a federal guarantee, according to Rep. Scott Garrett, R-NJ.Garrett, who chairs the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, said the goal of his legislation is to facilitate continued standardization and uniformity, ensure rule of law and provide MBS investors with the necessary transparency and standardization to ensure “that a deep and liquid market develops” without Fannie and Freddie.

Not much has changed since the 2010 edition of the ABS East Conference, and the outlook for 2012 is hardly encouraging, but conference sponsor Information Management Network drew about 30 percent more participants to its annual industry gathering in Miami Beach this week. As one attendee put it, everybody at the conference was down on the market, yet nobody is buying and nobody is selling. Regulatory uncertainty continues to stymie securitization activity. The federal government still dominates the U.S. mortgage market, with little change in sight. Tepid economic growth is generating lackluster demand for...

The status quo in the MBS market – suffocating domination by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae – isn’t likely to change for the next five years, or longer, according to industry experts at this week’s ABS East conference in Miami sponsored by Information Management Network. Although a number of industry groups have offered proposals similar to the third option outlined by the Treasury Department in its reform white paper – a more competitive market of issuers backed by private capital that issue MBS with backstop guarantees from the government – those proposals are far from uniform, said Laurie Goodman, senior managing director at...

Federal regulators ran into such a buzz saw of opposition on their proposed implementation of Dodd-Frank Act risk-retention rules for securitization that they may start over again with a new proposed rule, according to industry experts at the ABS East conference sponsored by Information Management Network. The market would be better off if regulators abandoned the risk-retention rule altogether, said Steven Kudenholdt, co-chair of capital markets practice at SNR Denton. He doubts that regulators can get it right, and the proposal has been a “distraction” for a market that’s still in distress. Throwing in...

Despite a rare new issue backed by current production jumbo loans, the non-agency MBS market hit a record low in the third quarter of 2011. Just $1.86 billion of new non-agency MBS came to market in the third quarter, a significantly lower number than the previous low reached at the height of the financial crisis in the third quarter of 2008, when $2.15 billion of securities were issued. There was a huge fall-off in resecuritization activity. Just $301 million of these deals were issued in the third quarter, less than a tenth the volume in the previous three-month period. In addition to the...(Includes three data charts)

Most of the major players in mortgage securitization support some of the new disclosures floated by the Securities and Exchange Commission in its revised shelf eligibility proposed rule – with a number of key changes and clarifications. Reflecting the investor’s perspective, the Asset Management Group of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association again “enthusiastically supported” the SEC’s proposal to mandate standardized disclosure at the asset level, believing that all of the asset-level data fields should be mandatory. “Well functioning markets require the disclosure of as much relevant asset-level data as...

Continued stress in the prime non-agency MBS sector, rising delinquencies and the use of a new loan-level loss model have prompted Fitch Ratings to revise loss expectations for more than 40 percent of non-agency pools backed by prime mortgage loans. A recent review of 1,154 rated transactions backed by prime collateral, consisting of approximately 15,000 bonds, caused Fitch to affirm or upgrade an estimated 58 percent of the prime non-agency MBS portfolio and to downgrade the remaining 42 percent, according to a report by the rating agency. At least 60 percent of the downgraded MBS were rated...