Federal banking regulators this week reminded banks and thrifts to pay close attention to how they monitor risks and calculate loss reserves in their home-equity loan business. An interagency supervisory memo sent this week does not change the regulators’ policy on allowance for loan and lease losses for closed-end second mortgages and home-equity lines of credit, but it urges lenders to “monitor all credit quality indicators” relevant to junior liens. Although many observers have raised concerns about the risk of second mortgages, delinquency rates on loans held by banks, thrifts and credit unions have been lower...

MBS and ABS markets in the U.S. are increasingly being shaped by global forces, from the impact of the European debt crisis to the worldwide adoption of new international regulatory standards and the surge in Euro securitizations that’s taking up some of the slack from the depressed U.S. non-agency MBS sector. There was an unmistakable international flavor to the ASF 2012 conference sponsored by the American Securitization Forum in Las Vegas this week. A significant number of the more than 5,000 attendees – an ASF record – came from outside the U.S., and numerous panels were devoted to global issues...

Government regulators continue to wrestle with the controversial risk-retention rule mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act that is widely seen as one key to the prospects for reviving the non-agency MBS market. Officials from one of the agencies involved in the rulemaking told attendees at this week’s annual meeting of the American Securitization Forum that regulators are still studying the landslide of comment letters that came in response to a proposed rule published in April 2011. The extended comment period closed in August. “It is in the nature of the rulemaking process that an advanced notice of proposed...

Officials at the Federal Reserve signaled this week the bank will maintain its current level of market support for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae debt and MBS to help keep long-term interest rates for mortgages and other products at historic lows. The housing market remains mired in a lackluster recovery, shackled by massive foreclosures and a huge overhang of unsold inventory, despite all the unconventional support the Fed has bent over backwards to provide. During its meeting this week, the Federal Open Market Committee decided to maintain its “highly accommodative stance for monetary...

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago is in the midst of crafting an “unusual” plan to supplement the Bank’s current affordable housing and community investment programs with $50 million in additional funds to be used to promote housing and economic development throughout its district.According to a filing the Chicago Bank made with the Securities and Exchange Commission late last month, the three-year initiative will be in addition to the Bank’s current Affordable Housing Program (AHP) grant process and is part of an agreement with the FHLBank regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency.“We are in the process of developing the framework for the use of these funds which will be deployed by the end of 2014,” explained the Bank in its Dec. 27 SEC filing. “This program will be in addition to our other community investment programs in 2012, 2013 and 2014.”

The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week less than enthusiastically issued a call for public comment on the potential revival of Property Assessed Clean Energy program loans even as the Finance Agency is appealing the court order mandating issuance of its proposed rule.On Jan. 26, the Finance Agency published in the Federal Register an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concerning PACE mortgage assets and a Notice of Intent to prepare an environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act “to address the potential environmental impacts of FHFA’s proposed action.” Property Assessed Clean Energy programs offer loans for energy-efficiency home improvements. While 27 states and the District of Columbia have legislation in place to permit PACE financing for green homes, in July 2010, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stopped purchasing PACE-related mortgages that had automatic first-lien priority over previously recorded mortgages.

California Democrats, including many in the state’s congressional delegation, would like the current head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency replaced by President Obama for someone who will take “immediate action to prevent more foreclosures.” Earlier this month, a group of 28 California House Democrats dispatched a letter to the president urging him to appoint a new permanent FHFA director via recess appointment. The Finance Agency under Acting Director Edward DeMarco has “consistently and erroneously interpreted its mandate” as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s regulator “far too narrowly” and consequently has failed to help struggling California homeowners.

Richard Cordray, the new director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, this week parried with a key House Republican over disclosure of the agency’s regulatory agenda, a lengthy to-do list that was virtually dictated by Congress in the Dodd-Frank Act. “Since the onset of the financial crisis, members of Congress have heard from businesses of all sizes that markets ... need certainty. In this regard, the CFPB has failed the test,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-NC, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private...

There has been little progress in the development of new ways to pay for credit ratings even though researchers have seven proposed systems designed to address the conflicts of interest that have plagued the non-agency MBS market, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. The GAO noted that there were five significant ratings compensation models when it last reported on the subject in 2010, and two more have since been proposed. But the authors of these models have done little additional work to flesh them out, and none has been adopted in the marketplace, the GAO said. “Given that the [rating...

Insurance companies will likely increase their investment in non-agency residential MBS, with market and regulatory influences encouraging movement toward hybrid and floating-rate securities as opposed to fixed-rate bonds, according to some top securities industry analysts. The primary driver on the regulatory level is the anticipated slight rise in capital requirements expected to result from a recent action by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the association of state insurance regulators. On Dec. 27, 2011, the NAIC released updated pricing designations that...