The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged three MBS traders with fraud for inflating the prices of MBS they bought from and sold to investors. Former traders Ross Shapiro, Michael Gramins and Tyler Peters allegedly defrauded customers to illegally generate millions of dollars in revenue for their ex-employer, Nomura Holdings International. As senior traders with Nomura’s residential MBS desk since 2009, the brokers arranged trades between customers, meaning that each would buy MBS from one customer and resell them for profit to another customer. As head trader, Shapiro arranged MBS and manufactured housing ABS trades. According to the SEC, the traders’ illicit pricing took place...

Some $800 million in servicer-advance ABS was issued by New Residential last week, helping to restart activity in the sector. New servicer-advance ABS issuance had stalled due to issues with ratings from Standard & Poor’s, the predominant rating service in the market. The two deals concurrently issued by New Residential followed a $225 million issuance by Ocwen Financial at the end of June. The firms helped end a year-plus long break in the issuance of rated servicer-advance ABS. In April 2014, S&P placed...

Federal regulators have implemented a number of rules in recent years aimed at moving banks away from a reliance on credit ratings when making investing decisions. Officials at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. stress that if a bank’s management doesn’t have comprehensive understanding regarding a security, the bank shouldn’t invest in the MBS or ABS. “The gist of these new requirements is simple: banks should understand the risks associated with the securities they buy and should have reasonable assurance of receiving scheduled payments of principal and interest,” said Robert Hendricks, capital markets policy analyst at the FDIC. In an FDIC report, Hendricks provided...

Standard & Poor’s ranked as the most active rating service in the non-mortgage ABS market at the midway mark in 2015, but came in last in the non-agency MBS sector. S&P provided ratings on $63.55 billion of non-mortgage ABS issued during the first half of the year, or 60.3 percent of total issuance. That was off slightly from its 64.1 percent market share for all of last year. The company has gotten more active in rating credit card deals, but has lost some of its share in vehicle finance and business loan ABS. Fitch was...[Includes two data tables]

The trajectory of delinquencies for U.S. timeshare ABS is continuing its downward trend, and issuance is expected to be near or perhaps even exceed last year’s level, with solid prospects for continued stable growth throughout the rest of the year, according to a consensus of industry analysts. U.S. timeshare ABS delinquencies fell again in the second quarter of 2015 to their lowest level in eight years, the latest index results from Fitch Ratings show. Total delinquencies for the second quarter were 2.66 percent, down from 2.79 percent in the first quarter and 2.92 percent a year ago. The ratings service has seen...

Student loan debt is no joke in America – and mortgage bankers, in particular, know all about it, especially since it’s being singled out as the chief reason why some borrowers can’t afford to buy their first home. Each year, a new group of college graduates has to start figuring out how to pay off their student loans. There’s even a website dedicated to showing the national student debt in real time – roughly $1.2 trillion as Inside Mortgage Trends went to press – along with credit card debt and auto loans. Currently, 15 percent of mortgagors have...

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee this week concluded its 53rd consecutive meeting without raising interest rates, issuing a statement that provided no hint whatsoever that such an increase would occur this year, notwithstanding previous commentary and the wishes of many on Wall Street. “To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the committee today reaffirmed its view that the current 0 to 0.25 percent target range for the federal funds rate remains appropriate,” said the Fed in its now-boilerplate language. In determining how long to maintain this target range, the FOMC said...

DBRS published proposed criteria this week to rate ABS backed by proceeds from Property Assessed Clean Energy programs. While the Federal Housing Finance Agency continues to place PACE-related prohibitions on mortgages delivered to the government-sponsored enterprises, the rating agency suggested that PACE programs are designed with a number of protections. Comments on the proposed criteria from DBRS are due Sept. 8. The firm would join Kroll Bond Rating Agency in offering ratings on PACE securitizations. KBRA has rated four PACE deals, the first of which was issued in March 2014 and all of which have received AA ratings. The PACE deals rated by KBRA were related...

New issuance of non-mortgage ABS increased in most major product categories during the second quarter of 2015, although a slowdown in floorplan deals dampened the party slightly. The ABS market generated $54.15 billion in new issuance during the second quarter, a gain of 5.8 percent from the first three months of 2015. It was the strongest new issuance figure since the financial market meltdown, with the previous high ($54.22 billion) coming in the third quarter of 2007. ABS issuance has climbed...[Includes two data tables]

A number of trade groups that represent firms involved in the securitization market are pushing for an appeal to be heard in a case that has significant implications for the MBS and ABS markets. A ruling in May by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Madden v. Midland Funding determined that nonbanks shouldn’t receive the federal preemption of state law that has been allotted to banks under the National Bank Act. “The outcome of the case would significantly impair...