Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae officials pledged to continue efforts to build a better secondary market system while coping with the business challenges of dealing with an increasingly diverse universe of lenders delivering loans directly to the agencies. “Fannie Mae is a different company today,” said Timothy Mayopoulos, president and CEO of the firm, during a panel session at this week’s annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association. He said 80 percent of the government-sponsored enterprise’s upper management has been promoted to their roles or hired since the GSE went into conservatorship four years ago. Half of the company’s 7,000 employees have been hired since then. “The people of Fannie Mae today are...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is looking for feedback on a proposed advisory bulletin which would set forth standards to guide FHFA staff in its supervision of secured lending to insurance company members of the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks.The Finance Agency’s advisory bulletin on insurance company collateral, published in the Oct. 5 Federal Register, noted that lending to insurance company members over the last several years has come to represent “an increasingly larger portion” of FHLBanks’ overall business, with several Banks actively targeting this member segment.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have released new guidelines designed to bring more of the two GSEs’ servicing requirements into alignment. The updated policies, both issued Oct. 3, focus on aligning contracts and the enforcement of remedies with seller/servicers in compliance with a Federal Housing Finance Agency directive. “The requirements announced in this bulletin build on the success [of previous announcements], and through our work with Fannie Mae, provide servicers with greater clarity, consistency and transparency across the enterprises on how servicer performance will be measured,” explained Freddie in its announcement.

The use of Federal Home Loan Bank advances rose among bank and thrift members overall during the second quarter of 2012, with one top-three member moving up a notch due to increased advance use both on a quarterly and on a year-over-year basis, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Bank Mortgage Database. All of the nation’s banks and thrifts used a combined $325.6 billion in advances as of June 30, 2012, up 6.5 percent from the first quarter of 2012, but off 4.5 percent from the same period a year earlier. Top-ranked Citigroup increased its advance use by 55.7 percent at the end of the second quarter and up 7.0 percent from the same period last year. One year earlier, Citigroup ranked third after having moved down one position from the previous quarter.

Fixed-rate mortgages comprised most of August’s FHA production, which totaled $22.1 billion, up 13.2 percent from July and 37.9 percent from a year ago, according to an Inside FHA Lending analysis of FHA data. FRMs accounted for 98.9 percent of new loans with FHA insurance in August. In-house originations made up 79.6 percent of new endorsements while purchase loans accounted for 56.1 percent of FHA originations during the month. Wells Fargo is the only top FHA lender to exceed the billion-dollar mark. In fact, the bank reported $2.2 billion in new FHA originations, 76.0 percent of which were produced in-house. The purchase mortgage share of Well’s total FHA originations was ... [2 charts]

Fitch Ratings said it has affirmed the ‘AAA’ long-term issuer default rating and support floors of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta.Fitch noted that as a GSE, the Atlanta Bank’s IDRs are linked to the U.S. sovereign rating. “FHLBank Atlanta has historically benefited from its affiliation with the U.S. government and its current IDRs and outlook benefit from the implicit support that it receives,” said the rating agency. “Fitch believes that implicit sovereign support for the FHLBank system would be forthcoming due to its important mission as it pertains to homeownership, serving as a source of liquidity to its members and the wide global distribution of FHLBanks debt.”

Some three years after it was first declared to be on fiscal thin ice, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle took a big step toward firmer financial ground earlier this month. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates the 12 FHLBanks, reclassified the Seattle Bank as “adequately capitalized,” allowing it to move forward with plans to repurchase excess capital stock for the first time since December 2008. “Even though this initial repurchase amount is relatively small, it is a significant milestone in our return to normal operations,” explained FHLBank of Seattle President and CEO Michael Wilson in a letter to members.

The GSEs continued to reduce their footprint in global debt markets during the second quarter of 2012, with new issuance and debt outstanding down from the previous quarter and from the same period a year ago. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks issued a combined total of $622.3 billion in new debt during the second quarter, a 12.1 percent decrease from the first quarter and a 14.3 percent decline from the second quarter of 2011. GSE debt outstanding at $1.942 billion fell 14.7 percent from the first quarter and was down 10.4 percent from the same period a year ago.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities remained the preferred investment choice of the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks during the second quarter of 2012, with a modest increase from the previous quarter, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside The GSEs based on data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Meanwhile, Ginnie Mae securities posted an ever-so-slight decline within the FHLBank system during the period ending June 30, 2012. GSE MBS accounted for 72.0 percent of combined FHLBank MBS portfolios, up 2.7 percent from the first quarter. The Finance Agency’s data do not separately break out Fannie and Freddie volume or share.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week joined a growing chorus raising warnings about proposals to use the eminent domain powers of local government to seize performing underwater mortgages out of non-agency MBS pools. In an unusual move, the agency said it has “significant concerns about the use of eminent domain to revise existing financial contracts and the alteration” of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Federal Home Loan Bank securities holdings. The FHFA formally invited public comment on the concept and warned that “action may be necessary on its part [as conservator and regulator of the government-sponsored enterprises] to avoid a risk to safe and sound operations and to avoid taxpayer expense.” The issue drew attention this week because both Fannie and Freddie managed...[Includes one data chart]