Some investors won’t return to the non-agency MBS market until the federal government establishes minimum standards for issuers, according to Chris Katopis, executive director of the Association of Mortgage Investors. Speaking at the RMBS 3.0 symposium produced by Information Management Network and the Structured Finance Industry Group this month in New York, Katopis said investors are frustrated with the lack of action from the government to help the non-agency MBS market. “We know there’s a lot of work going on, but at some point the government has to set minimum standards,” he said.Katopis said investors are happy that SFIG is working on a new representation-and-warranty framework for non-agency MBS. However, the AMI is skeptical of voluntary industry standards. “Having ...

Acting on a new policy that increases the focus on prosecuting individuals for corporate wrong-doing, the Department of Justice is reportedly planning to file criminal charges against executives at JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland for the alleged pre-crisis sale of non-agency MBS to unsuspecting investors, the Wall Street Journal has reported. According to the report, the DOJ investigations were based on documents that allegedly suggested that shortly before the mortgage meltdown, executives at the two financial institutions securitized mortgages and sold them to investors knowing that the underlying loans were defective. The JPMorgan probe began after prosecutors uncovered crucial evidence from a related civil investigation in 2007: a memo from a bank employee cautioning senior executives about ...

The Structured Finance Industry Group and the Treasury Department continue to work on complementary initiatives to revive the non-agency mortgage-backed security market. SFIG’s upcoming plans include a push for transparency among issuers, while the Treasury has shifted its focus somewhat away from a benchmark non-agency MBS transaction. Eric Kaplan, a managing director at Shellpoint Partners and one of the leaders of SFIG’s RMBS 3.0 effort, said SFIG is ...

The latest developments in the Structured Finance Industry Group’s effort to revive the non-agency MBS market have been met with praise from many industry participants. However, larger issues continue to constrain activity in the market. SFIG recently released a package of model representations and warranties for non-agency MBS. “I think this effort to standardize reps and warrants is a really important step in helping investors get more comfortable with the sector,” Grant Bailey ...

Hatteras Financial is working to issue a jumbo mortgage-backed security backed by adjustable-rate mortgages. The real estate investment trust has acquired more than $275 million in jumbo ARMs since launching its conduit operations last year. The planned jumbo MBS from Hatteras is Onslow Bay Mortgage Loan Trust 2015-1, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week. The REIT’s conduit operates as Onslow Bay Financial ...

The Structured Finance Industry Group put out the third edition of its RMBS 3.0 “Green Papers” initiative early this week, featuring dozens of model representations and warranties for new non-agency residential MBS, including a range of proposed standardized constructs. “This release substantially builds upon our growing series of Green Papers, which are aimed at restoring confidence to the ‘private label’ RMBS market,” the trade group said. The first and second editions were released in 2014. The 39 model reps and warrants included in the third edition complete...

A recent settlement between DBRS and the Securities and Exchange Commission suggests that in the years following the financial crisis, the rating service didn’t dedicate enough resources to reviewing ratings on outstanding non-agency MBS. The SEC found that between April 2009 and February 2011, DBRS employed only one analyst who was principally responsible for the majority of surveillance tasks for the firm’s outstanding ratings for non-agency MBS and real estate mortgage investment conduits. DBRS had more than 5,000 applicable ratings outstanding in that span. The SEC added...

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association recently filed an amicus brief in support of the defendants to reverse a case in which the Federal Housing Finance Agency argued that Nomura Holdings sold shoddy MBS to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In the case of FHFA vs. Nomura Holdings, a judge ruled in May, after a three-week bench trial, that Nomura and RBS Securities were liable for the claims brought by the FHFA and knowingly sold bad MBS to the government-sponsored enterprises before the 2008 financial crisis. The MBS were backed by mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of about $2.05 billion at the time of purchase. Nomura appealed...

The Structured Finance Industry Group released its latest “RMBS 3.0 Green Paper” this week as part of an effort to revive the non-agency mortgage-backed security market. The nearly 300-page paper focuses on model representations and warranties for non-agency MBS backed by new originations. SFIG detailed 39 model reps and warrants, adding to eight other model reps and warrants that were previously released by the trade group. About half of the latest model reps and warrants ...

The third quarter of 2015 marked one of the few periods in recent years when Redwood Trust didn’t sell a jumbo mortgage-backed security. Instead, the real estate investment trust focused its jumbo sales efforts on the whole-loan channel, a trend expected to continue into 2016, according to officials at Redwood. “A strong portfolio bid for home loans from banks currently results in a more favorable loan-sale execution for us versus securitization,” Brett Nicholas, Redwood’s president ...