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...

The SFIG Vegas conference this week set another attendance record for the annual event, demonstrating strong interest in the structured finance market. While investors are comfortable with most asset classes of MBS and ABS, significant concerns remain about non-agency MBS. More than 6,700 people registered for the conference, according to Jade Friedensohn, director of programming at Information Management Network, which produced the conference along with the Structured Finance Industry Group. Potential investors in non-agency MBS continued...

As Democrats in Congress worked on reforms after the financial crisis, issuers of MBS and ABS repeatedly warned that regulatory uncertainty would hurt the market. With Republicans now looking to roll back parts of the Dodd-Frank Act, industry participants are pushing for risk-retention requirements to remain in place, again citing the potential impact of regulatory uncertainty. “It’s foolish to think that we would try to tear it all down,” said Howard Kaplan, a partner at the law firm of Deloitte & Touche, during this week’s SFIG Vegas conference. Among many other changes, the CHOICE Act from Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, would repeal...

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...

It is two months into 2017, and compliance attorneys are still trying to discern some of the finer nuances of applying the Dodd-Frank Act’s risk-retention requirements to various sectors of the secondary market beyond residential MBS. One such area is structured aircraft portfolio transactions. In a recently issued white paper, attorneys from the Clifford Chance law firm and four other U.S. law firms looked at applying the rules to a typical issuance of securities by a newly formed special-purpose vehicle that owns (or will own) a portfolio of aircraft and related leases. They note...

Risk-retention requirements for the majority of MBS and ABS sectors were in effect by the end of December, and industry participants have largely adjusted to them, according to analysts. The Dodd-Frank Act generally requires sponsors of ABS, non-agency MBS and commercial MBS to retain at least 5.0 percent of each deal. The retention requirements for residential mortgages took effect at the end of 2015, though most deals have been backed completely by qualified mortgages, which makes them exempt from risk retention. Other asset types have...

Swap-margin posting requirements established by federal regulators are set to take effect on March 1. The Structured Finance Industry Group is leading a push for delayed implementation as securities issuers are having trouble determining how to comply with the standards. The swap-margin rules were required by the Dodd-Frank Act and drafted in 2015 by federal banking regulators and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Unlike requirements set by European regulators, the U.S. rules lack a general exemption from compliance for securitization special-purpose vehicles. Securitization SPVs issue various types of MBS and ABS. SFIG noted...

With Republicans looking to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act and pass new standards that will impact MBS and ABS, the Structured Finance Industry Group recently reviewed areas for reform along with how industry participants can push for changes. The review was completed by SFIG staff and Lewis Cohen, a partner at the law firm of Hogan Lovells. “It would be a mistake to assume that a simple repeal of Dodd-Frank would be sufficient to address many of the regulatory frictions that have impeded the use of securitization to provide funding and create growth in the real economy,” SFIG said. While MBS and ABS participants have long pushed for a loosening of the mandatory risk-retention requirements set by the DFA, SFIG said...

An affiliate of New Residential Investment is preparing to issue a $400.0 million ABS backed by servicer-advance receivables, according to S&P Global Ratings. The ABS relates to mortgages serviced by Ocwen Financial. NRZ Advance Receivables Trust 2015-ON1 Series 2017-T1 received preliminary AAA ratings from S&P. In addition to citing strengths in the structure of the ABS to support a AAA rating, S&P noted that it upgraded its servicer ratings for Ocwen from “below average” to “average” in September. Series 2017-T1 is...

Marketplace lenders could benefit from the development of special-purpose national bank charters for financial technology companies under consideration by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to ABS participants. However, the proposal has been met with strong opposition from state regulators, as it would preempt state oversight of certain nonbanks. In December, the OCC requested comments about a potential special-purpose national bank charter for so-called fintech companies, including marketplace lenders. The Structured Finance Industry Group endorsed...