RBS Securities has agreed to pay $120 million to the state of Connecticut to resolve an investigation into its underwriting of residential MBS shortly before the 2008 collapse of the financial markets. CT Attorney General George Jepsen and Department of Banking Commissioner Jorge Perez announced the agreement, which, they said, is the largest single settlement in Connecticut’s history. It also ends a four-year state investigation into RBS’s securities underwriting and due diligence practices. At issue were...

Non-agency MBS investors looked to the practices of the government-sponsored enterprises when establishing the standards for a deal agent, according to Alessandro Pagani, a portfolio manager and head of securitized assets at Loomis Sayles. “The GSEs were very effective in enforcing their rights as owners of the collateral; they had access to information and real enforcement power to put back loans that needed to be put back and direct servicers,” he said at the recent ABS East conference produced by Information Management Network. The Deal Agent Committee released...

Affiliates of New Residential Investment this week issued a $345.0 million ABS backed by excess spread from mortgage servicing rights on non-agency mortgages. The deal appears to be the first of its kind to receive a credit rating. Morningstar Credit Ratings assigned a BBB rating to NRZ Excess Spread-Collateralized Notes 2016-PLS2. With MSRs, excess spread consists...

JPMorgan Chase and Redwood Trust remained the only two active issuers of prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities as of the end of the third quarter of 2016, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. A total of $4.07 billion in prime non-agency MBS was issued during the third quarter of 2016, more than five times the volume issued in the previous quarter. However, through three quarters this year, prime MBS issuance ... [Includes one data chart]

The sample deal-agent agreement released by non-agency industry participants in September aims to provide a template for a third party that would protect investors in future non-agency mortgage-backed securities. Some industry participants warn that there are still more issues that need to be addressed, including a potential overlap in the duties for a deal agent and tasks traditionally handled by trustees and master servicers. At the recent ABS East conference produced by ...

The Structured Finance Industry Group is preparing to publish standards that aim to increase transparency for representations and warranties on new non-agency mortgage-backed securities, according to officials at the trade group. Eric Kaplan, a managing partner at Ranieri Strategies, said SFIG will release one or two “green papers” this year as part of the group’s RMBS 3.0 effort to revive issuance of non-agency MBS. He said the next green paper from SFIG will ... [Includes two briefs]

Issuance of new residential MBS and non-mortgage ABS rose sharply in the third quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. The market produced a total of $494.11 billion in new MBS and ABS during the third quarter, a 25.0 percent increase from the second quarter. That brought year-to-date production to $1.208 trillion, slightly ahead of the pace set during the same period in 2015. It was...[Includes one data table]

Fitch Ratings was the most active rating service in the sluggish non-agency MBS market through the first half of 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking. Standard & Poor’s was the top rating agency in the more active non-mortgage ABS market. Fitch rated just seven non-agency MBS issued during the first six months of the year, which totaled $4.74 billion in volume. While that equaled 30.9 percent of total non-agency MBS issuance for the period, many deals were private placements without ratings. Fitch’s share of rated issuance was 55.4 percent. DBRS ranked...[Includes two data tables]

Foreign investors, commercial banks and mutual funds all beefed up their holdings of agency MBS during the second quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. The Federal Reserve remained the biggest investor in the agency MBS market with $1.744 trillion on its books at the end of June. That accounted for 29.7 percent of the $5.867 trillion of single-family agency MBS outstanding at that time, but it was down 0.5 percent from the end of March. The central bank’s MBS holdings vary slightly in the Fed’s weekly snapshots as pending transactions wait to clear, but its game plan is to hold its portfolio steady by reinvesting principal payments. The single-family agency MBS market grew...[Includes two data tables]

The effort by some non-agency MBS investors to create an entity to protect investors took a step forward as a sample deal-agent agreement was circulated late last week in advance of the ABS East conference in Miami. A deal agent would be tasked with protecting the interests of investors in non-agency MBS, including duties of care and loyalty. The leaders of the effort, James Callahan, a principal at Pentalpha Global and Alessandro Pagani, head of securitized assets at Loomis Sayles & Company, said the market should adopt the agreement as the template for new non-agency MBS. However, the sample agreement leaves...