Tag Archives: RMBS

Opus Capital Markets Consultants, LLC (Opus CMC), has added to its due diligence expertise with the appointment of longtime mortgage veteran William Shuey as director of securitization.

The mortgage portfolio expanded by 4.5 percent—an increase of $7.14 billion—up to an estimated $1.91 trillion in December. It was the highest annualized growth rate for any one month seen in Freddie Mac's portfolio since December 2009, when it grew by 5.7 percent.

Ocwen's response called the investors' claims "ill-conceived" and state that "[w]hile knee-jerk foreclosures may redound to the special economic interests of your clients, they are not in the best interests of the trusts as a whole, not consistent with industry practice, and therefore prohibited under the servicing agreements."

In its latest look at the RMBS segment, Fitch says that while the market still has some rebuilding left to do, it "has seen some rather substantial improvements of late," owing in large part to improved loan underwriting standards in recent years. According to the company, the performance of recent vintage mortgage loans is the best on record so far.

In its predictions for 2015, Moody's says stronger underwriting standards, third-party reviews, and the implementation of risk retention rules will all bolster the credit quality of new private-label RMBS. "New regulations setting strict standards for origination of qualified mortgages along with ability-to-repay rules will drive the strong credit quality of new issuance," said Navneet Agarwhal, managing director at Moody's.

In a lawsuit filed earlier this week, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) charged Deutsche Bank National Trust Company with negligence in its role as trustee for 121 residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) trusts, leading to the collapse of five corporate credit unions.

A ruling issued by a federal judge this week clears the way for investors to proceed with a class-action suit against JPMorgan Chase, meaning that all the investors can be represented by a lead plaintiff in the case. Investors are accusing the bank of misleading them by making false statements regarding the RMBS when the securities were packaged and sold to the investors in 2007, a year before the subprime lending crisis.

HSBC Holdings is the latest institution to make good with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) after the firm's North American arm agreed Friday to pay hundreds of millions to settle claims revolving around faulty mortgage-backed securities (MBS) sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the years before the crash.

Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $3.15 billion to settle a lawsuit filed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) over faulty RMBS. Under the terms of the settlement, Goldman Sachs will pay $2.15 billion to Freddie Mac and about $1 billion to Fannie Mae to buy back the alleged faulty RMBS the two GSEs purchased between 2005 and 2007. FHFA estimates the worth of the settlement to be about $1.2 billion due to the bonds' current value.

The Structured Finance Industry Group (SFIG) has released the first of a series of papers aimed at restoring investor confidence in the private-label residential mortgage-backed securities market. Overall, the group's effort looks to clarify differences in alternative standards in order to improve transparency across RMBS deals.