The overwhelming majority of private student loan borrowers who apply for a co-signer release were rejected, according to a recent report from the CFPB’s student loan ombudsman. “Many private student lenders advertise options to release a cosigner from a private student loan,” the report began. “However, an analysis of industry responses to the CFPB’s information request found that the lenders and servicers surveyed granted very few releases – of those borrowers that applied for co-signer release, 90 percent were rejected.” The CFPB also said that consumers have little information on the specific borrower criteria needed to obtain a co-signer release. “Consumers reported being confused about their eligibility for obtaining a co-signer release as well as not understanding why they had been ...

Neither of the credit-rating industry’s perennial market leaders – Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service – managed to claim a top spot during the first quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking. Fitch Ratings ranked as the top player in rating the bigger non-mortgage ABS market. The company rated 43 ABS issued during the first quarter that represented 64.2 percent of total issuance by dollar amount. The company rated all eight credit-card ABS issued in early 2015, along with most of the student-loan deals. Fitch raised...[Includes two data tables]

Industry Groups Urge Restructuring of CFPB. Wading into risky political territory, a number of industry groups last week urged Congress to support H.R. 1266, legislation that would revamp the governing structure of the CFPB. Submitting a statement for the record to the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, the industry groups said consumers and the industry would be better served by changing the CFPB governance structure from a single director to a bipartisan five-person commission as used by other federal agencies. “The CFPB has tremendous authority to supervise a multi-trillion dollar industry, which as we have learned, can have incredible ramifications on our economy,” the statement said. “As such, it is imperative the CFPB remain stable ...

There is good news for investors in private student-loan ABS these days, according to the latest market intelligence from industry analysts. Student loan performance was healthy in the first quarter, and more growth is expected going forward. Continued strong performance trends were seen in repayment, delinquencies and charge-offs for private student loans through March 31, 2015, according to the semi-annual private student-loan performance report from MeasureOne, which was released earlier this week. Among the key findings, year-over-year delinquencies continued...

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority started publishing pricing data for a broad range of ABS this week in an effort to increase transparency. Industry participants suggest that the new disclosures will prompt a decrease in trading and have some impact on pricing. The ABS pricing details are available through the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine and include deals issued as 144A private placements. “The dissemination of transaction information in ABS is...

A number of industry groups representing a broad array of financial services providers took advantage of the CFPB’s latest inquiry about consumer complaint information to express their concerns with the bureau’s possible expansions of its related database. Earlier this year, the bureau issued a formal request for information about the Consumer Complaint Database, asking for “input from the public on the potential collection and sharing of consumer compliments about providers of consumer financial products and services and more information about a company’s complaint handling.” The bureau specifically asked for input on two key points, the first of which was ranking or otherwise sorting service providers by certain metrics related to the complaints they receive, allowing complainants to rate service providers’ ...

The CFPB has launched a public inquiry into student loan servicing practices that create repayment challenges, hurdles for distressed borrowers, and economic incentives that may affect the quality of service. The bureau said it has observed that many borrowers are experiencing significant student debt stress. “Consumers have complained about billing problems associated with payment posting, prepayments and partial payments,” it said. The CFPB has also heard from distressed borrowers that student loan servicers aren’t being very useful in helping them avoid defaults and delinquencies. “Distressed borrowers complain that they are given the runaround when they ask for help, they have a hard time getting straight answers from servicing staff, and that the staff is untrained or unequipped to deal with ...

Underwriting standards, not a lack of income or significant student loan debt, have held back originations of mortgages to first-time homebuyers in recent years, according to industry analysts. As lenders gradually loosen their underwriting standards, originations of mortgages for first-time homebuyers are expected to increase in the coming years. In a recent brief, analysts at Capital Economics stressed that there doesn’t appear to have been a fundamental shift in homeownership aspirations, even though housing is currently slightly over-valued compared with renting. “There is...

Borrower complaints about their student loans continued their apparently inexorable downward momentum, both quarter over quarter and year over year, according to a new analysis by Inside the CFPB of the latest complaint data from the CFPB. Industry wise, consumer gripes fell 11.3 percent QoQ and an even larger 15.7 percent YoY, the data show. Navient, the Sallie Mae spinoff, continues to dominate because of the sheer size of its footprint in the marketplace. Nonetheless, it showed impressive drops of 24.3 percent and 33.0 percent, respectively, for both time periods. Repayment problems continue to represent the lion’s share of the issues about which student-debt borrowers have issues. However, after peaking in the second quarter of 2012, and experiencing another big ...

Non-mortgage ABS production jumped sharply higher in the first quarter of 2015, with $50.08 billion of new issuance, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking. First-quarter issuance was up 38.1 percent from the previous three-month period, although early 2015 was down 6.3 percent from a year ago. The two strongest segments of the market were vehicle finance ABS, which accounted for 46.7 percent of issuance during the first quarter, and business loan ABS, which chipped in another 30.9 percent of new production. Ford Motor Credit had...[Includes three data charts]