LendingClub, which operates an online marketplace, recently issued its first consumer loan-backed ABS of the year. The loans were originated under a model that has been successfully challenged in certain courts, raising concerns from rating agencies.
A panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling earlier this month, said a reseller of mortgages can demand that an originator repurchase defective loans, even though the contract between the two companies did not specify a timeframe within which the originator had to cure any defects. The decision reversed a lower court’s ruling.
In a first, Connecticut Green Bank will issue an ABS backed by solar renewable energy credits. The $38.6 million deal from the nation’s first green bank could provide proof of concept for future issuance.
In a class action lawsuit filed last month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, a group of institutional investors allege that several Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-approved dealers colluded in a systematic scheme to manipulate prices in the secondary market for agency debt.
To date, the revival in the new “subprime” mortgage market has been driven exclusively by nonbank originators and aggregators, but now there’s a depository in the pond: Reliant Ban-corp, Brentwood, TN.
The Federal Reserve lost its top ranking among residential MBS investors during the fourth quarter of 2018, giving way to the commercial banking sector, according to a new In-side MBS & ABS analysis. [Includes three data charts.]
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association last week voted “by a substantial majority” to approve the uniform MBS for delivery into the crucial to-be-announced market. The announcement followed months of uncertainty about whether the influential trade group would endorse the single security.
The difference between the weighted average coupon on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac MBS soared to an average of 10 basis points in January, with Fannie pools showing consistently higher spreads. According to a report by Wells Fargo Securities last month, the wide gap may be because Fannie is offering sweeter guarantee-fee buy-up/buy-down deals to some issuers.