Four whole-business securitizations totaling $3.58 billion are in the works, according to presale reports, including a $900.0 million deal from Coinstar. The securitization from Coinstar received a preliminary BBB rating from Kroll Bond Rating Agency. The company owns nearly 20,000 kiosks that count change located in grocery stores and other retail venues, mostly in the U.S. The company generates...

VantageScore is gaining traction as an alternative to FICO credit scores in consumer lending and structured finance, according to a study by DBRS. Introduced in 2006 as a joint venture among three national credit bureaus – TransUnion, Experian and Equifax – VantageScore was first used in securitization transactions backed by student-loan refinancings. Its transition to consumer loans and structured finance demonstrates industry acceptance as an alternative to the widely used FICO scores, DBRS pointed out. The study compares...

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 ...

Issuance of ABS backed by nonprime personal installment loans is expected to increase, according to S&P Global Ratings. The rating service hasn’t assigned AAA ratings to such ABS, though S&P said it will approach each deal on a case-by-case basis. Between 2013 and 2016, $10.50 billion of ABS backed by branch-based unsecured personal installment loans was issued, according to S&P. The rating service highlighted the sector recently, noting that personal installment loans don’t receive as much attention as marketplace lending, which had $15.10 billion in MBS and ABS issuance between 2013 and 2016. “Branch-based fixed-rate, fixed-term unsecured personal installment loans may not be...

Ocwen Financial Corp. is facing more trouble than just its struggle with the CFPB and a number of state regulators. The mortgage lender/servicer also faces the increasing likelihood of some ratings downgrades as well as pending class-action lawsuits. Fitch Ratings recently revised Ocwen’s U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities servicer ratings outlook to negative. “The revision of the rating outlook for the servicer ratings is based on uncertainty surrounding the financial and operational impact of new regulatory actions taken by the CFPB and the multi-state actions following the findings of the Multi-State Mortgage Committee,” Fitch said. The negative rating outlook also takes into consideration Ocwen’s financial condition. Fitch placed the company’s and its corporate parent’s long-term issuer default rating on “rating watch ...

As industry participants continue to work on revamping standards and practices in the non-agency MBS market, Mark Adelson proposed a number of materiality standards for representations and warranties on new issuance. Adelson is an independent consultant and was S&P Global Ratings’ chief credit officer from May 2008 until December 2011. Adelson published his proposal in the latest issue of The Journal of Structured Finance, which he edits. Adelson focused...

S&P Global Ratings proposed changes this week to its criteria for rating non-agency MBS. The changes would provide higher ratings to certain tranches of non-agency MBS backed by new prime mortgages while prompting lower ratings for new issuance backed by seasoned mortgages. The rating service is considering a number of adjustments to foreclosure assumptions, loss severity projections and changes relating to the evaluation of qualitative factors. “The proposed revisions to our methodologies and assumptions are...

Ocwen Financial’s travails continued to worsen this week after rating agencies announced adverse ratings actions amid the servicer’s mounting regulatory and legal problems. On April 24, Moody’s Investors Service placed Ocwen’s servicer assessment on review for a possible downgrade. On April 25, Fitch Ratings revised its previous rosy affirmation of the company’s primary servicer rating and stable outlook to negative. Both firms said the ratings actions were due to the increased regulatory scrutiny on Ocwen’s servicing operations, which could lead to hefty penalties that could pose a threat to the company’s financial stability. On April 20, a consortium of state mortgage regulators filed...

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 ...