Last year was a decent enough year for the student loan sector, and so far this year, the space is looking dramatically more robust, according to analysts at the DBRS ratings service. New issuance so far in 2017 is more than twice that from the same period last year, with volume exceeding $4.5 billion, according to Jon Riber, a senior U.S. ABS ratings analyst at DBRS. “There are...

A proposal from a former high-ranking official at S&P Global Ratings to reduce incentives for rating shopping has been met with skepticism and resistance from officials at other rating services. Howard Esaki, the former global head of securitization research at S&P Global Ratings, and Lawrence White, a professor of economics, NYU Stern School of Business, recently published a proposal to reform the process for how rating services are selected to grade MBS and ABS. They said...

Affiliates of New Residential Investment and CarVal Investors packaged re-performing mortgages with a total unpaid principal balance of more than $1 billion for two separate MBS that will be issued this month. There’s plenty of supply of seasoned mortgages in the secondary market, but higher interest rates could weaken demand, according to industry analysts. An affiliate of CarVal Investors priced a $395.3 million non-agency MBS late last week with more variety in collateral than the typical MBS backed by seasoned mortgages. In addition to re-performing mortgages, Mill City Mortgage Loan Trust 2017-1 included some home-equity lines of credit and newly originated mortgages. Vintage HELOCs accounted...

The three major credit bureaus plan to exclude two critical pieces of negative information from their reports, which may make it easier for some borrowers to qualify for a mortgage. Many tax liens and civil judgments, which can weigh down a credit score, will be removed. As part of a multi-year plan to alleviate incorrect information, on July 1, Equifax, Experian and Transunion will apply new public record standards when it comes to collecting and the timely updating of civil judgments and tax liens, the Consumer Data Industry Association said this week. The new standard will apply...

A transparency feature included in the Dodd-Frank Act aimed at helping MBS and ABS investors understand the representations and warranties on a transaction has created a significant amount of work for rating services with little benefit for investors, according to officials at ratings firms. Since June 2015, rating services have been required by the DFA to compare the reps and warrants on a transaction they’re rating with a benchmark set of reps and warrants for that asset class. These 17g-7 reports often span hundreds of pages, detailing similarities and differences between the reps and warrants on a specific transaction compared with a set of benchmarks established by the rating services. Claire Mezzanotte, a group managing director and head of global structured finance at DBRS, said...

Online consumer lender Prosper Marketplace, based in San Francisco, recently finalized a deal with a consortium of institutional investors to purchase as much as $5 billion of the lending platform’s unsecured consumer loans during the next two years. The consortium comprises investment bank Jefferies Group LLC and three asset managers: affiliates of New Residential Investment Corp., Third Point LLC, and an unnamed entity of which Soros Fund Management LLC serves as principal investment manager. Under the terms of the deal, the consortium will earn...

Ginnie Mae production fell substantially in February from January as the government-insured lending market continued to lose steam in the first quarter of 2017. Ginnie mortgage-backed securities issuance fell 24.0 percent from January as fewer purchase and refinance loans were pooled for securitization, bringing February’s total issuance to just $32.2 billion. Year-over-year Ginnie MBS issuance, on the other hand, increased by 6.2 percent. The government-insured market set an all-time record of $545.0 billion in originations during 2016, a whopping 31.0 percent jump from the previous year. That total eclipsed previous records for originations of FHA, VA and rural housing loans guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to data compiled by affiliate Inside Mortgage Finance. In addition, government-insured lending accounted for a record ... [ 3 charts ]

By creating liquidity in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities, liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) policies have attracted lenders – mostly nonbanks – whose funding relies more on securitizations – toward FHA loan originations, according to a new paper published by academicians. The paper, “Nonbanks and Lending Standards in Mortgage Markets: The Spillovers from Liquidity Regulation,” maintains that such lenders approve more FHA loans because they can sell the loans easily, given the high liquidity of the securitized product. The greater liquidity in Ginnie MBS has resulted in higher market share and eased standards especially for nonbanks and lenders with less deposit funding. It also has led to tighter standards for conventional mortgages, which are eligible for government sponsored enterprise securitization, wrote Pedro Gete and Michael Reher, researchers in the ...

Planned revisions to the Financial CHOICE Act would loosen regulation of rating services, according to a recent memo by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Hensarling sent the memo to the leadership team of the House Financial Services Committee this month detailing changes that will be included in hise so-called CHOICE Act 2.0. The expected revisions to standards for nationally recognized statistical rating organizations go well beyond the rollbacks included in the version of the CHOICE Act that was introduced in September. The 2016 bill would have repealed...

Securities investors will soon be able to have a taste of the revenues generated by Long Island iced teas and Jack Daniel’s glazed chicken strips as TGI Friday’s is set to issue a $450.0 million whole-business securitization. The planned TGIF Funding LLC Series 2017-1 received ratings from Kroll Bond Rating Agency and S&P Global Ratings this month. KBRA assigned BBB ratings to both tranches of the security while S&P assigned BBB- ratings. The deal follows...