RMBS

General Electric placed its WMC Mortgage unit into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it has nearly $1.7 billion in legal settlements agreed to or pending.

An industry working group might seek legislation to eliminate the need for investor consent in the shift to a new benchmark interest rate. But any legislative fix is almost certain to be challenged because choosing an alternative to Libor will inevitably favor one party in a transaction over another.

General Electric Co. finalized an agreement to pay $1.5 billion to settle a U.S. investigation into the manufacturer's defunct subprime mortgage business.

Non-qualified mortgage-backed securities record issuance in the first quarter puts it on pace to top full-year volume predictions, according to Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

The bank agreed to modify loans to struggling U.S. borrowers as part of a 2017 settlement. Instead, it’s receiving credit for financing new mortgages that likely would have been made anyway.

The Structured Finance Industry Group wants Treasury and the IRS to issue a notice that a change from Libor to an alternative index would not be treated as a taxable exchange.

While reinsurers are becoming more comfortable with the risk it is offloading, the GSE wants to maintain control of the workout process for loans that go bad.

Depending on market conditions and demand from whole loan buyers, it could fund 25% to 35% of fix-and-flip loans through deals like the $219 million one it just completed.

At $230 million, GSMBST 2019-PJ1 is notably smaller than recent transactions from JPMorgan and Redwood Trust; borrowers also have less equity in their homes.

Two Harbors Investment Corp., which grew its servicing portfolio by 22% in the fourth quarter, priced a common stock offering to raise funds to buy more rights as well as mortgage-backed securities.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association approved changes to its good delivery guidelines that ease the path to the government-sponsored enterprises issuing uniform mortgage-backed securities starting on June 3.

Agency mortgage-backed security prepayment speeds increased in February with much of the refinance activity coming from newer loans and those with high coupons, a report from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said.

Being too dependent on the automated underwriting tools created by the government-sponsored enterprises to originate loans underlying private-label mortgage-backed securitizations could negatively affect their credit quality, a report from Moody's said.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is streamlining its Ginnie Mae holdings by combining mortgage-backed securities with similar characteristics into larger pass-through instruments.

Och-Ziff Capital is suing BNY Mellon, as trustee, to compel it to calculate interest in a way that is more favorable to the class of securities it holds.

Residential mortgage-backed securities servicers are better able to weather a downturn and the resulting loan defaults today versus before the crisis because of their investments in technology and regulatory compliance, Fitch Ratings said.

As 30-year fixed-rate mortgages rose 30 basis points year-over-year, non-QM originations are estimated to grow 400% in 2019.

Plans to begin rating securitizations backed by fix-and-flip mortgages may help lenders create new capacity and satisfy growing demand for short-term financing of house flipping projects.

A security lapse left millions of mortgage records exposed online without proper data protections, according to security researchers.

Rising mortgage rates will only be "a mild deterrent" to home purchase activity during 2019 as other indicators like price and demand will cancel that out, according to Standard & Poor's.