Fitch Ratings was the most active rating service in the sluggish non-agency MBS market through the first half of 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking. Standard & Poor’s was the top rating agency in the more active non-mortgage ABS market. Fitch rated just seven non-agency MBS issued during the first six months of the year, which totaled $4.74 billion in volume. While that equaled 30.9 percent of total non-agency MBS issuance for the period, many deals were private placements without ratings. Fitch’s share of rated issuance was 55.4 percent. DBRS ranked...[Includes two data tables]
A strong tide of refinance activity lifted mortgage origination volume in 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data released late this week by federal regulators. Aggregate national data released by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council show a total of $1.651 trillion in first-lien mortgage originations for home purchase and refinance. That was up 32.9 percent from 2014 but failed to ... [Includes one data chart]
The volume of originations by state-licensed companies, number of active loan originators and number of mortgage companies all increased in the second quarter, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of data from the Conference of State Bank Supervisors. State-licensed lenders reported $266.55 billion in originations during the second quarter of 2016 (excluding reverse mortgages), marking the highest quarterly volume since the state regulators started collecting ...
Cybersecurity rules proposed by the New York Department of Financial Services this month are seen as the first of their kind from a state regulator and more prescriptive than guidance from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. The proposed standards would apply to a wide range of companies regulated by New York, including mortgage lenders and servicers. Under the proposal, financial institutions would be required to establish a cybersecurity program ...
The inherent complexity and ambiguity of many of the provisions of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s integrated disclosure rule are stymying the ability of technology to aid in lender compliance, top industry experts said this week. Speaking during a webinar sponsored earlier this week by Inside Mortgage Finance, former CFPB official Benjamin Olson, now a partner with the BuckleySandler law firm in Washington, DC, detailed the obstacles that lenders are confronted with ...
The Department of Veterans Affairs is drafting a new policy to address ongoing confusion about its Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan program and ease investor anxiety. The uncertainty among VA lenders stems from the treatment of IRRRLs under the VA’s interim final rule defining what constitutes a “qualified mortgage.” That rule took...