The Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati last week announced a changing of the guard among top management as the Bank’s president and CEO will step down this summer to retire.David Hehman will step down effective June 1 after 35 years at the Bank, including nine years as its president and CEO. Hehman, 63, is credited with leading the FHLBank of Cincinnati through the 2008 financial crisis when banks of all sizes were forced to turn to the Cincinnati FHLBank for liquidity.The FHLBank’s board appointed Andrew Howell to replace Hehman. Howell joined the FHLBank of Cincinnati in 1989 and is currently its executive vice president and chief operating officer.

No matter which political party controls the House during next year’s 113th Congress, there will be a new House Financial Services Committee chairman in charge of setting the agenda as both the current chair and the ranking member are vacating their positions at the end of 2012.Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-AL, said this week he will observe the House’s six-year term limit rule for chairmen and ranking members and not seek a waiver with the House Republican Conference. On Nov. 28, Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, the committee’s one-time chairman and current ranking member announced he would retire from Congress at the end of his present term. Bachus, who was elected to the House in 1992, is seeking re-election this fall.

Securitization experts are expecting a rerun of last year in 2012, as the U.S. economy slowly rights itself and most segments of the asset-backed securities market generate reasonable new issuance and stable performance. While observers suggest the housing market may make only modest improvement this year, no one expects much non-agency mortgage activity. Growth in issuance of non-agency mortgage-backed securities is going to be very slow, said Ron Mass, co-head of structured products at Western Asset Management Co. Because the market is underwriting the mortgage borrower, and no longer relying...

If there was any question about what was driving the housing market in 2011, some year-end housing numbers have provided two clear answers: investors and distressed properties. The combination of investors buying up large amounts of distressed properties not only put downward pressure on home prices, but also cut into the home-purchase mortgage business by generating a significant number of cash sales. These are some of the major conclusions that can be drawn from a look at 2011 results from the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. Last year’s housing...(Includes one data chart)

In what may be a harbinger for other nonbank mortgage lenders fighting to make their way in a tough and competitive market, Primary Residential Mortgage, Inc. has launched an enterprise risk management (ERM) group, a step taken to make sure the company has in place the risk-monitoring and evaluation policies to properly manage risk through the entire loan origination process. “Over the last couple years, the mortgage industry has been under intense scrutiny,” said Dave Zitting, president and CEO of PRMI, a nationwide mortgage banking company based in Salt Lake City. “While the larger banks all have...

Government oversight of mortgage lending has dramatically increased in the last two years, and the current trajectory established by the Dodd-Frank Act suggests things are going to get a lot worse before they’re going to get any better. The Dodd-Frank Act will generate a heavy load of new regulations for the industry to implement, and the process is not yet halfway done, said Rod Alba, senior regulatory counsel at the American Bankers Association, during an Inside Mortgage Finance Publications webinar this week. “We are in the midst of at least 24 months’ worth of overheated regulatory pronouncements,”...

Mortgage brokers have seen their role in the home loan market significantly diminished in recent years, but they staged a minor comeback in the fourth quarter, according to a new analysis of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac data by Inside Mortgage Trends. Mortgage brokers originated 12.1 percent of the single-family loans securitized by the two government-sponsored enterprises during the fourth quarter. That was up from 9.8 percent during the previous quarter. It was the strongest broker share of GSE business over the past two years. The surge in broker share paralleled a...(Includes two data charts)

The fixed-rate mortgage accounts for nine of every 10 loans originated, and it’s easy to see why. Locking into historically low rates makes a lot of financial sense. So who is choosing to buy volatility instead? Who are the 10 percent who still borrow adjustable-rate mortgages? “For some consumers, it’s a better product,” said Frank Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac. “If, for some reason, you know you’ll be leaving your home soon, a 5/1 hybrid ARM is a very fitting instrument. Choosing an ARM could be a matter of timing.” The hybrid ARM is the most common adjustable-rate product...

Radian Guaranty has integrated with LoanSifter, a mortgage technology provider, to bring its mortgage insurance products and pricing “in front of loan officers.” The partnership is the first of its kind for Radian, allowing the company to be competitive at the point of sale rather than wait for customers to come and access its website for product and pricing data. Used by many loan officers, LoanSifter is a loan eligibility and pricing engine and automated underwriting system that collects and maintains pricing and underwriting guidelines from hundreds of investors. Pricing data and guidelines may be from any...

More than 40 percent of mortgage industry quality control problems occur because of missing documentation and questionable data integrity. According to Interthinx, a risk mitigation solutions company, 40.9 percent of issues that plague quality control were related to missing docs and data integrity in 2011. This is a stark departure from years past. Missing documentation, for instance, accounted for only 7.1 percent of problems from 2006 to 2009. During those years, eligibility and credit issues were more of an industry scourge. In 2011, tougher underwriting standards have brought that...