Compliance & Regulation

Treasury Department officials are working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency on ways to structure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac MBS, allowing private investors to share in some of the credit risk on government-guaranteed securities.

Credit unions are working to protect their net interest margins without adding undue interest rate risk and CFOs expect their attention in the second half of the year will remain on squeezing what they can from investment portfolios.

Residential Capital’s bankruptcy filing on May 14 is a credit negative for two major bond insurers, Moody’s Investors Service said.

Fitch Ratings and Kroll Bond Ratings will rate the $1.1 billion CMBS conduit deal backed by 61 fixed-rate commercial mortgage loans that are secured by 80 properties.

While rules can be attractive when setting monetary policy, they cannot replace analysis, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley.

The Supreme Court in Freeman v. Quicken Loans No. 10-1042 ruled that federal regulators cannot use RESPA as a price-setting statute to stop lenders and other settlement service providers from charging excessive fees or even “unearned” or bogus fees for which no service is provided.

When the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced in the spring of 2011 that a group of major mortgage servicers had signed consent orders agreeing to a host of new regulations and reforms, the regulatory landscape of the mortgage servicing industry was fundamentally altered in ways that would have a profound and lasting impact.

Combining Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s MBS in the TBA market sounds like it is not impossible, but is much easier said than done.

Although the U.S. soccer team lost to Brazil the other night we can thank the interest rate gods that investors, world wide, keep buying our Treasury bonds, driving prices up and bond yield downs. In the past I've joked about a 30-year fixed rate loan at 2% and I'm starting to believe that it could happen.

Officials at Old Republic International Corp., and its new private mortgage insurance holding company Republic Financial Indemnity Group Inc. are still talking about plans to once again start underwriting mortgage insurance policies.