The Federal Housing Finance Agency issued guidance for the GSEs and Federal Home Loan Banks to establish independent internal audit (IA) functions. This is so they can relay timely information and make the appropriate corrections when it comes to elevated risks. The agency requires the boards of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHLBanks to have an audit committee and a chief audit executive (CAE) solely responsible for the IA function. The FHFA said that the CAE must establish internal audits that are independent and objective so that they effectively identify and assess risks. Internal audits should cover the entire audit universe over a maximum four-year period.

The supervision of examiners in the Division of Federal Home Loan Bank Regulation has been lax when it comes to making sure deficiencies within the FHLBanks are corrected, according to a recent Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of the Inspector General report. The IG reviewed a sample of nine matters requiring attention (MRA) that the division issued from January 2014 through December 2015. When it comes to correcting serious supervisory matters, the IG said that the bank regulator has been inconsistent in following FHFA requirements. For two of the MRAs, examiners determined that the affected FHLBank made no progress in remediating the deficiencies and reissued MRAs with the same exact terms.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has included more details regarding how it will monitor the examinations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in its annual performance plan for fiscal year 2017, released last week. Over the past year, the FHFA’s Office of Inspector General has blasted the regulator for not completing targeted examinations on time and inadequate follow-up on what were deemed matters requiring attention (MRAs). The new plan noted that the GSEs will continue to address MRAs by submitting remediation plans to FHFA for review. Each non-objected remediation plan will include a timeframe for completion within the fiscal year the MRA was issued or beyond. FHFA added that Fannie and Freddie management are responsible for...

A judge ruled that the city of Chicago cannot impose a real estate transfer tax on buyers who purchased homes sold by the GSEs. Even though federal law does not allow local governments to collect taxes to property held by federal lenders, the GSE accused the city of circumventing the law by waiting for properties to be sold then sending the buyers a tax bill. This ruling stems from a federal court case last October in which Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Finance Agency sued the city for trying to collect taxes from buyers who purchased foreclosed homes from the GSE.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency recently issued guidance on data management and usage and said it expects Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to have the appropriate policies, procedures and standards in place.The advisory bulletin noted that the architecture of the data should provide easy access and effective utilization across the GSE as appropriate. Each GSE should also establish data quality requirements so that data used for decision-making are relevant, accurate, complete, timely and consistent. Five different areas concerning data were highlighted in the bulletin. Under data governance, the FHFA said that the GSEs should each establish a data...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sold $3.78 billion of credit-risk transfer bonds during the third quarter, a 7.8 percent increase from the previous period, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis of CRT disclosures made by the two government-sponsored enterprises. That brought year-to-date issue in Fannie’s Connecticut Avenue Securities program and Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk program to $10.73 billion, up 13.3 percent from the first nine months of last year. Fannie had...[Includes one data table]

U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Margaret Sweeney’s ruling, released last week, raises new questions about the validity of government efforts to keep thousands of other documents secret in a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholder case over the net worth sweep imposed by the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to shareholder advocates. In Fairholme Funds Inc. v. United States, et al, shareholders argue that the net worth sweep of the government-sponsored enterprises’ profits is unfair, and they have scored significant victories in getting access to various written communications to prove their claim. The recent batch of documents Sweeney released to the plaintiff’s attorneys show...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw a robust 29.7 percent jump in single-family mortgage business during the third quarter, with most of the gain coming from the purchase-mortgage side of the business. And more purchase-mortgage business usually means a bigger share for correspondent lenders. Correspondent originations accounted...[Includes two data tables]

Trends in the agency mortgage-backed securities market suggest that private mortgage insurers may have gained some market share from government MI programs during the third quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitized a total of $75.89 billion of insured single-family mortgages during the third quarter, an increase of 29.5 percent from the previous period. That was a tad below the 29.7 percent increase in overall MBS production by the two government-sponsored enterprises, but it kept the private MI share at 26.8 percent for the third quarter. Meanwhile, the booming Ginnie Mae market showed...[Includes two data tables]

Fannie Mae has significantly ramped up its nonperforming loan sales in 2016, while Freddie Mac is running slightly behind the pace it set in 2015. Fannie offered $4.69 billion of NPLs through the first nine months of this year, compared to $2.78 billion for all of 2015. The government-sponsored enterprise announced five more pools totaling $1.39 billion up for sale this week, moving the year-to-date total to $6.08 billion. The latest sale is...