Ocwen Financial recently filed a lawsuit against Fidelity Information Services, which completed a two-year review of Ocwen as part of an order by the California Department of Business Oversight. Ocwen alleged that FIS submitted false, fraudulent and improper invoices for the review, including invoices from strip clubs and casinos. FIS has disputed the allegations. The Structured Finance Industry Group is...

Ginnie is adding more muscle to a performance-measurement tool to help improve mortgage-backed securities issuers’ ability to compare their performance with other issuers in terms of meeting agency requirements. Other enhancements to the Issuer Operation Performance Profile (IOPP) would increase scoring transparency and make performance reports clearer and easier to understand, the agency said. Introduced in 2015, the IOPP is essentially a performance scorecard to gauge effectiveness as a Ginnie issuer. Issuers are scored based on a pre-determined set of metrics for performance and for default. Each metric is weighted in the issuer’s overall performance score and – for single-family issuers only – default management score. If an issuer fails in one metric, it may be required to develop a remediation plan to improve performance. The number, type and weight of the metrics may be ...

Ginnie Mae is making enhancements to a tool developed for MBS issuers to help them compare their performance with other issuers and to determine whether they are meeting agency expectations. Improvements to the Issuer Operation Performance Profile (IOPP) tool also would increase scoring transparency and make reports clearer and easier to understand, the agency said. The IOPP was introduced...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both announced new re-performing loan sale transactions this month as the two government-sponsored enterprises look for ways to shed illiquid assets. Fannie began marketing its first re-performing loan sale back in November to help reduce its balance sheet. The program continues to gain more traction with each sale. That first sale totaled $789.2 million in unpaid principal balance. Fannie has since announced...

Moody’s Rates Credit Suisse FHA Securitization Transaction. Moody’s assigned investment-grade ratings to Credit Suisse’s first securitization deal in 2017 backed by seasoned re-performing and performing, fully amortizing, fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages insured by FHA. The deal is the first FHA-insured re-performing transaction since 2010, according to the rating agency. The collateral pool is comprised of 672 first-lien, fixed-rate loans and ARMs with a weighted average updated FICO score of 614 and loan-to-value ratio of 94.2 percent. Approximately 82.4 percent of the loans in the collateral pool were previously modified. Approximately 52.8 percent of the loans have been current for at least 24 months. Another 17.3 percent of the loans have been current for more than 12 months. Comments Sought on Various Information Collection Proposals. The Department of Housing and ...

The vacancy rate across single-borrower, single-family rental securitizations rated by Morningstar Credit Ratings fell to its lowest level in a year, as high retention rates for full-term leases kept performance in the sector within expectations, according to a company report. The vacancy rate dropped to 4.1 percent in March, driven by an improving average retention rate, which rose for the third consecutive month, the report said. The average retention rate for all single-borrower, single-family rental securitizations now stands at 79.5 percent, it noted. In addition, the overall turnover rate held...

Losses on rated non-agency MBS backed by re-performing loans have been minimal, according to DBRS. RPLs have been one of the dominant types of mortgages in post-crisis non-agency MBS. Issuance of MBS backed by RPLs increased significantly in 2015, according to DBRS. Some $13.4 billion of volume was issued that year, compared with a total of $5.9 billion of issuance between 2010 and 2014. The deals often don’t receive credit ratings, which can make them difficult to track. Some $15.3 billion of RPL MBS were issued...

There is a new boss in the Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities market. PennyMac Financial rose to the top of the issuer ranking in the first quarter of 2017 despite a sharp decline in volume, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. PennyMac issued $10.78 billion of single-family Ginnie securities during the first three months of the year. The figures in this analysis are based on Ginnie loan-level disclosures, which truncate loan amounts to $1,000 increments. PennyMac’s first-quarter production was off 27.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2016, a slightly bigger decline than the 24.8 percent drop in overall Ginnie issuance. Even though the firm fared slightly worse than the total market, its first-quarter downturn was less severe than Wells Fargo’s. Wells has been the top Ginnie producer for a long time, as well as the top player in most segments of the ... [ Charts ]

A steep drop in VA-backed securities issuance in the first quarter of 2017 suggests that Ginnie Mae’s efforts to curb serial refinancing of VA loans are working, according to agency officials. Speaking on a panel at the annual VA Lenders Conference in Kansas City, MO, this week, Ginnie executives said that a change in pooling requirements for streamlined refinance mortgages appears to have curbed a destructive appetite for refinancing new VA loans within six months of closing. The practice has caused faster prepayments in Ginnie mortgage-backed securities pools and smaller payouts to investors. VA refi volume fell 42.7 percent from the previous quarter (see chart on page 2), contributing significantly to the 32.2 percent decline in total VA loan securitization during the period. John Getchis, senior vice president at Ginnie Mae, said he does not think the churning trend will continue because the ...

Fitch Ratings updated its rating criteria last week for MBS backed by seasoned mortgages, including re-performing loans and nonperforming loans. The revisions to the criteria removed two standards that Fitch previously applied when analyzing seasoned mortgages. For re-performing mortgages originated before 2009, Fitch will no longer consider the original loan documentation. All mortgages will be treated as though they were originated with full documentation, even if the mortgages were originated with less than full documentation. “In recent years, the distinction in borrower behavior for loans with different original documentation levels has disappeared...