Risk management

A proposal to tighten financial requirements for government-sponsored enterprise counterparties that sought to lower risk in a volatile market should be suspended, a group representing smaller lenders said, arguing it would aggravate current distress.

Facebook and other social media platforms are a powerful way to connect members and loan officers, but lenders must ensure they first have a culture of compliance.

Insurance brokerage and risk management firm Brown & Brown plans to expand its lender-placed business by combining operations run by two former rivals with healthy respect for each other.

Fannie Mae completed its first two Credit Insurance Risk Transfer transactions of 2020, shifting $1 billion of single-family loan credit risk to insurers and reinsurers.

Black Knight introduced a model to gauge prepayment speeds and credit risk for investors that purchase commercial mortgage-backed securities.

Freddie Mac saw a decline in net profit in 2019 due to decreased interest rate income, lower amortization revenue and risk-reducing investment costs, but its consecutive-quarter results improved.

Fannie Mae identified the adoption of hedge accounting and regular issuance of multifamily Connecticut Avenue Securities deals as among strategies it could continue to pursue while navigating regulatory uncertainties and change.

NMI Holdings saw its insurance-in-force grow 38% over the past year as 90% of its clients used its black box pricing module during the fourth quarter.

To paint nonbanks as a source of systemic risk, particularly given the track record of commercial banks in causing the 2008 subprime mortgage fiasco, seems absurd.

Mortgages guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs may increase in certain regions due to a new option that can offset a broader fee increase.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is considering bringing back the idea of imposing stricter criteria for purchasing mortgages in areas where residential Property Assessed Clean Energy financing is available.

Mortgage lenders' uptake of innovations in artificial intelligence, big data and other technologies has been relatively slow. It's an approach that may not be tenable in 2020.

The Federal Housing Administration has implemented defect taxonomy revisions for 2020 that it considers one of several milestone achievements in its efforts to "provide greater clarity and consistency for lenders.”

The FHFA’s attempt to move some of its balance sheet into the private sector could leave investors with greater liabilities than they were initially told.

Star investor Jeffrey Gundlach and his team have generated strong returns by focusing on under-followed pockets of the market like mortgage securities, but his success may be hard to replicate.

The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority is forcing firms to spell out executives’ responsibilities and put them on the hook for conduct problems. The toughest rules will apply to larger mortgage lenders.

In recent months federal regulators have been speaking out on the risks that extreme weather events pose to the financial system, something their European counterparts have been doing for some time.

The Federal Housing Financial Agency's latest report on credit risk transfers shows Fannie Mae continues to slowly improve a multifamily mortgage risk-sharing metric that lags Freddie Mac's by a wide margin.

JPMorgan Chase may be leading the next trend for banks seeking to shift risk away from their mortgage portfolios — if regulators give Wall Street the green light.