Capital markets

The changes made to the schedule of bringing advanced credit metrics to major mortgage investors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac affect bi-merged reports and Vantagescore 4.0's implementation.

The proposed capital rule risks driving borrowers away from the traditional banking industry and into the arms of shadow banks, whose support during stressful times can be fleeting.

A group of former FTX and Alameda Research employees plan to use the venture money to build out a cryptocurrency exchange called Backpack. It's one of the startups seeking to fill a gap left by the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire. 

The company was able release credit reserves because of actual and forecasted prices that boosted net income, CEO Priscilla Almodovar said.

The government-sponsored enterprise financed 955,000 mortgages last year, down from the 1.8 million loans it backed in 2022.

The senior vice president for capital markets at the Housing Policy Council died Saturday after sustaining critical injuries a week prior.

"Someone somewhere has not taken a victory lap for the work that has been done to rehabilitate the enterprises." Priscilla Almodovar said in a Bloomberg interview.

The fintech revolution has been more successful at working with banks than at trying to replace them, points out Gene Ludwig, former Comptroller of the Currency, chair of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, and co-founder of Canapi Ventures. Those with "must have" products will fare far better in 2024 than those with "nice to have" tools, he says.

Citizens' SVP and director of mortgage secondary and capital markets reflects on what her experience with past cycles suggests about where this one may be headed.

The muni market finances the "fabric of our nation, and now, because of Citi's exit, the cost of financing for state and local governments is going to go up," a sell-side source said.

Anne Marie Pippin, associate director in the Federal Housing Finance Agency's Office of Financial Technology, weighs the forces shaping the industry's future.

The move gives stockholders a greater portion of recurring, predictable income as private equity asset sales stagnate due to higher interest rates and jitters over a potential recession. In exchange, the firms' dealmakers will get a bigger slice of the gains when their investments pay off.

Some proposed changes to uniform mortgage-backed securities, apartment loans and derivatives will be made while one involving credit reports and scores was pulled.

The Federal Reserve's vice chair for supervision noted that so-called basis trades by hedge funds are highly leveraged and use minimal haircuts. He added that much of this activity is concentrated among just a few funds.

Officials are looking into the banking giant's anti-money laundering measures with clients outside the U.S.

Financing buyouts with "payment-in-kind" loans can preserve cash, but cost more; banks are losing out to private lenders on some of these deals.

Charlie, a neobank marketed to people 62+, and Carefull, which partners with financial institutions, recently raised their Series A's. A third, called EverSafe, is embarking on its first fundraise.

Even though it is less than two years since it allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to accept such valuations, it is difficult to evaluate their effectiveness without such examinations.

Though home mortgage issuance has slumped in line with originations, new potential bank capital rules and increased consumer debt consolidation could boost activity for these two subsets in the secondary market.

Questions about how it will be implemented and whether the rest of the market will follow the agency's lead make the expense involved difficult to estimate.