Mortgage banking profits remained at very high levels during the second quarter of 2012, although about half the top lenders that have reported results so far said their income was down from the first three months of the year. In many cases, robust production income was offset by persistently high repurchase expenses. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports from 21 banks with significant mortgage banking operations revealed...[Includes one data chart]

In the aftermath of the collapse of the financial markets and the resulting recession, there has been a good deal of anxiety and concern that large, critical components of the U.S. and global finance markets may be vulnerable to exploitation by so-called shadow banking institutions and other entities that may be less regulated than major retail and investment banks. But such fears may be overblown, new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests. “Financial intermediation has evolved over the last few decades toward shadow banking. With that evolution, the traditional roles of banks as intermediaries between savers and borrowers are increasingly performed by more specialized entities involved in asset securitization,” said Nicola Cetorelli and Stavros Peristiani, two researchers at the New York Fed. However, their research, drawn upon data from 1983 to 2008, has shown...

Principal reduction loan modifications completed by five major banks as part of the national servicing settlement have not been applied disproportionately to mortgages in non-agency mortgage-backed securities, according to Fitch Ratings. Non-agency MBS investors have raised concerns that servicers that agreed to the recent $25.0 billion settlement will complete their mandated principal reduction mods on non-agency MBS instead of on portfolio loans. “Although still early, there has been no evidence of ...

Fannie Mae executives and staffers were at the front of the line of Countrywide Home Loan’s sophisticated influence peddling operation that showered not just GSE employees but Washington insiders with deeply discounted mortgage loans in order to curry favor, according to a newly released House committee report. The 136-page report completes a three-year investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee of Countrywide’s so-called Friends of Angelo program, named after CEO Angelo Mozillo, which ran for a dozen years until the lender was acquired by Bank of America in 2008.

Former Freddie Mac executive David Stevens had a change of heart and will not step down as the head of the Mortgage Bankers Association in order to take the number two job at SunTrust Mortgage as initially planned, much to the relief of industry observers. Stevens’ resignation as MBA president and CEO was to have taken effect June 30. However, the association declared on July 2 that Stevens would not relocate to SunTrust’s Richmond, VA, headquarters but rather remain ensconced in the MBA’s downtown DC corner office. On May 30, Stevens, 55, announced his resignation as the MBA’s head barely a year after he was recruited as a marquee player to revive the downsized and demoralized trade group.

Early indicators suggest that mortgage production volume was up slightly in the second quarter of 2012, and lenders continued to book strong net profits as a result of healthy gain-on-sale margins.Industry economists had generally expected a slowdown in loan production levels during the second quarter. The consensus forecast from economists at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Mortgage Bankers Association pointed to a 4.6 percent decline in new originations during the second quarter.Despite the fact that mortgage interest rates continued to ...

There isn’t a lot of doubt about the increasingly top-heavy nature of the mortgage business, but industry experts are divided over the role government policy has played and its impact down the road as Dodd-Frank Act reforms take root. A decade ago, in 2001, the top five lenders in the market accounted for 37.6 percent of total originations and 36.6 percent of mortgage servicing. By the end of last year, the top five lenders had a combined market share of 59.1 percent in originations and 55.2 percent in mortgage servicing.That trend could be exacerbated by the increased compliance ...

Mortgage servicers have not maximized their potential outreach to borrowers facing foreclosure in the wake of the consent orders issued last year by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Office of Thrift Supervision, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. The same can be said for the regulators. “Regulators and servicers have gradually increased their efforts to reach eligible borrowers and have taken steps to improve communication materials,” the GAO said, but they failed to undertake such “best practices” ...

A larger percentage of loans originated over the past three years show evidence of collusion fraud among parties to the transaction, according to LexisNexis. Prior to 2009, collusion fraud – defined as incidents of verified, non-arm’s length transactions – was reported on less than 5.0 percent of loans, the company said. For loans originated in 2009, that rate jumped to 7.0 percent and then to 9.7 percent in 2010. The rate edged down to 6.8 percent for 2011 originations, but experts think the reported numbers understate the prevalence of such fraud.“Because these complex relationships ...

Mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are increasingly coming from lenders’ retail production channels, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. In the second quarter of 2012, 58.1 percent of single-family loans securitized by the government-sponsored enterprises were retail originations, up from 52.9 percent in the first quarter. Broker originations dropped from 10.8 percent of GSE business to 9.0 percent, and the correspondent share slipped from 36.3 percent to 32.9 percent. After accounting for a whopping 83.2 percent of Fannie/Freddie business in the first quarter ...