After years of lobbying by the mortgage industry, Congress gave Ginnie Mae’s budget a boost for fiscal year 2024.

GreenState Credit Union issued its first auto ABS this week and M&T Bank returned to the market for the first time since 2013.

Angel Oak Capital Partners introduced an investment program tailored to increase insurance company investments in non-agency whole loans and securitizations.

Fitch updated 61 non-agency MBS following changes to its structured finance rating criteria in January.

Lenders typically hedge loans by short selling the type of security those loans will eventually go into. However, if the market for that security is unattractive, they can cross-hedge into better performing markets if their pricing movement correlates with the loans.

The diversification inherent in MBS may be the ideal tool to combat climate risk in housing finance.

Prepayments on VA loans in Ginnie MBS jumped in February and will likely remain elevated in March. It’s a recurrence of an ongoing problem for Ginnie and VA: streamlined refinance business.

Regulators are pushing higher capital requirements on banks and looking favorably at credit-risk transfer transactions, helping to increase CRT issuance. Investor demand for bank CRT is also outstripping supply.

Banks, the largest holders of agency MBS among investor groups, aren’t expected to be big buyers this year. Money managers helped to fill the void left by banks last year, but that might not continue into 2024.

Ratings for MBS with residential transition loans are helping to increase investor demand.