Secondary markets

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has moved ahead with an earlier proposal to postpone the full adoption of the qualified-mortgage ability-to-repay rule, citing a need to maximize borrowers' credit access.

The company is still searching for someone to fill the roll on a full-time basis, but the $600,000 annual salary cap may limit the candidate pool.

The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility was brought back to inject $100 billion into the pandemic-battered economy, but only a fraction has been disbursed. Yet experts, pointing to its calming effects on markets, recommend that it be extended into next year.

Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks said the agency plans to issue new assessment procedures within weeks as a follow-up to recent Community Reinvestment Act reforms. He also touched on the “true lender” issue and why the agency is considering a narrow-purpose payments charter.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council’s plan to study the market explains very little about which activities or firms, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will be designated as systemically important. Here's some clearer guidance.

The council created by the Dodd-Frank Act to identify systemic risks launched a review of the market as part of an activities-based approach that shifts focus away from targeting individual firms.

The Federal Housing Administration's move to insure loans with forbearance could help support homeownership opportunities constrained by the coronavirus if one change was made to it, trade groups said.

Groups representing community banks and credit unions generally support the new percentage-based goals set by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Banks would be wise to dust off their Great Recession playbook and shed nonperforming loans while growing through M&A.

Some benefits are materializing from Fannie Mae's pledge to limit servicers' exposure to principal-and-interest advances the way Freddie Mac does, but counterparties of both GSEs remain exposed to other concerns.