FHLBank Advance Data. JP Morgan Chase took the top spot for having the largest amount of Federal Home Loan Bank advances in the fourth quarter at $71,581. The bank saw a slight drop, 2.7 percent from the previous quarter, according to the latest data from Inside The GSEs (with chart). New number for Fannie. Fannie Mae created an easy to remember phone number to make getting in touch with the GSE simpler. Call 1-800-2-FANNIE (1-800-232-6643), which this week replaced multiple numbers. The GSE said the old phone numbers will remain available for a limited period of time. FHFA Chief FOIA Office Report. The 2016 Federal Housing Finance Agency Freedom of Information Act Officer Report noted that inter-agency emails, director calendar entries, internal memos and internal employee training materials are examples of the types of information the agency released at its discretion.

The 11 surviving Federal Home Loan Banks posted a significant increase in net income during the fourth quarter of 2015, along with a surprising jump in advances. The Office of Finance reported that the FHLBanks generated $673 million in net income during the fourth quarter, a 39.0 percent increase from the prior period. That brought year-to-date income to $2.850 billion, a 26.6 percent gain from 2014. Non-interest income was up sharply last year in large part because of settlements related to FHLBank investments in soured non-agency mortgage-backed securities, which brought in $688 million in 2015, mostly in the first half of the year. Legal settlements accounted for...

Consumers complained to the CFPB about debt collection issues at a substantially reduced level during the fourth quarter of 2015, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside the CFPB. During the period ending Dec. 31, 2015, consumer gripes were down 27.5 percent versus the previous quarter.Among the top 50 companies as ranked by consumer criticisms, 45 saw a double-digit percentage decline. Year over year, the story is less inspirational, with consumer kvetching down a mere 0.6 percent. Six companies saw complaints leap by triple digit percentages. To put some anecdotal flesh on these empirical bones, in the CFPB’s most recent supervisory highlights report, the bureau pointed out that during its examination of at least one debt collector, ...

Captive insurance companies don’t belong in the Federal Home Loan Bank system, according to the former chair of the Federal Housing Finance Board, the system’s previous regulator. “Simply put, the Federal Housing Finance Agency got it right with this regulation,” said Ronald Rosenfield, who served as chair of the FHFB in 2005, prior to the creation of the FHFA. During his three-year tenure, there were some captives joining, but he said they were doing so at a much slower pace. The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s recent decision to ban captives from joining the system has caused some uproar among industry groups who opposed the final ruling, but Rosenfield thinks it was the right thing to do.

Although captive insurance companies are now barred from joining, membership among traditional insurers in the Federal Home Loan Banks is growing. Fitch Ratings reports that the number of insurance companies participating in the FHLB system has grown by an average of close to 8 percent annually over the past five years. Membership is more commonly associated with commercial banks and other deposit and lending institutions, but there were 304 FHLBank insurance company members by the end of 2014, representing 4 percent of the total membership and nearly 13 percent of all funds advanced to members, said Fitch. Several groups of insurance companies have also substantially increased their borrowing capacity.

Officials at American Capital Agency announced last week that the real estate investment trust formed a wholly-owned broker-dealer subsidiary. The broker-dealer will help provide the REIT with repo funding and to-be-announced MBS trade-clearing capabilities. Peter Federico, a senior vice president and chief risk officer at American Capital, said the REIT started forming the broker-dealer about six months ago. He said the entity is fully staffed and is in the regulatory application process, with operations expected to begin midyear. “Once our broker-dealer is up and running, we will pursue...

The outlook for publicly traded real estate investment trusts that invest in agency MBS and related products is starting to improve, in part, because competing investments are looking ugly. That might seem like a small consolation prize for REITs, but several are posting decent earnings, even though the book value of their common stock is relatively weak. Meanwhile, while certain investors shun their stocks, many companies have engaged...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency released guidance in late January on how the Federal Home Loan Banks should classify investment securities. In doing so, it adopted the 2013 Uniform Agreement for FHLBank supervisory purposes. Where FHFA’s rule and guidance and the 2013 Uniform Agreement may conflict, the FHFA said its rules and guidance will apply. The directive states that FHLBanks should use “sound and conservative assumptions” as they pertain to upgrades and it provides classification approach examples and boundaries. For example, when a bank is considering whether to upgrade a classified security to “pass,” it should base its assessment on assumptions that minimize the likelihood that the FHLBank would need to classify the security again in the future.

Redwood Trust, which pioneered the revival of the jumbo MBS market a few years back, this month officially exited the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac correspondent-purchase business, dismantling the effort and trimming the size of its Denver office. The real estate investment trust had entered the government-sponsored enterprise market two years ago, after obtaining agency approvals at the end of 2013. It quickly built a network of several dozen lenders that sold whole loans to Redwood, which pooled them in GSE MBS. But sources familiar with the effort told...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s recent final rule limiting membership in the Federal Home Loan Bank system will reduce funding for originations of non-qualified mortgages and other non-agency activity, according to industry analysts. In recent years, many real estate investment trusts gained access to FHLBank advances via captive insurance companies. A final rule from the FHFA this month closed that so-called loophole, with the regulator claiming that Congress didn’t ...