A total of $185.32 billion of non-mortgage ABS were issued in 2014, the highest annual production level for the market since 2007, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking. ABS issuance was up 12.0 percent from the prior year, with solid gains in three of the market’s key sectors: auto finance, credit cards and business loans. The weakest link was the student loan ABS market, where annual production fell 25.4 percent from 2013 and slipped to its lowest level since 1999. Vehicle finance deals were...[Includes two data charts]

Issuers of auto ABS are loosening underwriting standards and delinquencies on subprime auto loans are increasing, but industry analysts suggest that there is little cause for concern. Performance remains much stronger than the delinquencies seen during the financial crisis and issuers are unlikely to loosen underwriting to the extent seen in the run-up to 2008. For independent finance companies, 60+ delinquencies increased by 13.7 percent in the past year, from 1.82 percent in the third quarter of 2013 to 2.07 percent in the third quarter of 2014, according to the latest data from Experian Automotive. Independent finance companies focus primarily on lending to subprime borrowers, and their delinquency trends outpaced any increase in delinquencies for other types of lenders that lend primarily to prime borrowers. Peter McNally, a vice president and senior analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, said...

New MBS and ABS issuance last year was down 34.4 percent from 2013, largely due to a huge decline in agency single-family MBS production, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. A total of $1.145 trillion of residential MBS and non-mortgage ABS were issued during 2014, the lowest annual production volume since 2000. Last year got off to a very slow start, with just $517.0 billion in new issuance through the first six months of 2014, before gaining pace during the second half. Total issuance fell 4.8 percent from the third to the fourth quarter. Agency MBS remained...[Includes three data charts]

The strong growth in issuance of jumbo mortgage-backed securities seen since 2010 stumbled in 2014, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Some $9.79 billion in jumbo MBS were issued last year, down 25.4 percent from activity in 2013. Issuance has been constrained by bank portfolio demand for jumbo mortgages. The spike in interest rates in 2013 led to nine months of very low issuance. Rates have since fallen and a number of new jumbo MBS issuers have entered the market, but quarterly volume has struggled to reach the levels seen in early 2013. Those looking for a silver lining could...[Includes one data chart]

Wall Street analysts are generally projecting a year of stability for most asset classes in the consumer ABS space for 2015, despite a few more losses and an anticipated increase in interest rates. The one exception might be subprime auto. Analysts at Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services cited a favorable overall environment characterized by a strengthening economy, healthy consumer credit fundamentals, and robust structural protections in ABS transactions. “We expect...

A coalition of global securities-market regulators proposed criteria late last week to assist the financial industry’s development of “simple, transparent and comparable” securitization structures. The proposed criteria from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the International Organization of Securities Commissions would apply to many types of MBS and ABS. The extent of involvement by the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the proposed criteria is unclear. The SEC declined to comment on the proposal and the Bank for International Settlements wouldn’t reveal the members of the taskforce that worked to develop it. However, the SEC is a member of IOSCO and the agency noted that standards issued by IOSCO become the benchmark against which an IOSCO member’s regulatory practices are assessed. The BCBS and IOSCO said...

Structured Finance Industry Group staff and some investor members met recently with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Structured Finance to talk about the initial reaction that investors had to the final Regulation AB II rule. Among topics addressed were market trends, operational aspects and scope of applicability of the final rule, according to an update SFIG provided its members recently. Meanwhile, the SFIG is...

Bank and thrift holdings of non-mortgage ABS hit a record $184.16 billion at the end of September, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis. That represented a significant 7.6 percent increase in bank ABS investment in just one quarter. But the sharp increase in industry holdings was fueled by a massive acquisition of credit card ABS by TD Bank, the U.S. operation of the Canadian-based Toronto-Dominion Bank. TD Bank reported...[Includes one data chart]

The odds are stacked against auto loan ABS issuers being able to significantly lower the amount of credit risk they have to retain in securitizations under the recently adopted risk-retention rule. That’s mostly because of the strict underwriting criteria for underlying loans to qualify for the exemption from the requirement, according to a new ABS research report from Moody’s Investors Service. “Under the final risk-retention rule of the Dodd-Frank Act, auto loan ABS issuers can reduce the financial interest they must retain in their transactions through a qualifying automobile loan (QAL) exemption,” explained report authors Jeffrey Hibbs, assistant vice president, and Henry Chen, an associate analyst. Issuers can put...[Includes one data chart]

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority revealed recently that a non-agency MBS trader at SG Americas Securities was fired by the firm and sanctioned by FINRA for pre-arranged trading. The self-regulatory organization said that on multiple occasions from 2001 through 2013, Yimin Ge entered into an agreement with counterparties at other institutions to engage in pre-arranged trading. FINRA said such deals violate the Securities Exchange Act as well as FINRA’s rules. The pre-arranged trades involved...