Partly to comply with liquidity cover ratio requirements imposed in the wake of the financial crisis, U.S. banks ramped up their holdings of high-quality liquid assets. But once they got compliant, many of them shifted their asset allocations more to agency MBS and U.S. Treasuries, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve. This could have implications for the U.S. central bank’s massive balance sheet over the long haul, they added. As of Jan. 1, 2015, large banks in the U.S. have needed...
A handful of large banks continued to retreat from the business of servicing home loans for other investors during the second quarter of 2017, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call reports. Commercial banks and savings institutions reported that they serviced $3.627 trillion of residential mortgages for other investors, typically mortgage-backed securities trusts, as of the end of June. That was down just 0.4 percent from the previous period ... [Includes one data chart]
Mortgage-banking profits improved dramatically during the second quarter as production volume surged and servicing held its own, according to data reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Participants in the group’s quarterly mortgage-banking performance study reported average pretax income of $2.12 million for the second quarter. That was up handsomely from the average $886,000 companies earned in the first three months of the year. Profits weren’t as strong as they were ...