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EDGE: Measuring the Potential for Another Cash-out Refi Wave

With significant home price gains over the last two years, U.S. homeowners are sitting on vast, mostly untapped wealth. Nationally, home prices are up an aggregate of 28% over the last two years, with some regions performing even better. But unlike other periods of strong home price gains, cash-out refinancings lagged overall refinancings during the pandemic rate-rally. In this short article, we look at cash-out refinancings over time, and their potential impact on prepayments, especially on discount cohorts.

A historical perspective

In the early 2000s, mortgage rates fell nearly 200bp, triggering a massive refinancing wave as well as a rally in home prices that lasted well into 2005.

Edge Housing Gains and Cash out Refis

During this early millennium rally, the market saw significant cash-out refi activity with homeowners borrowing at then-historically low rates to free up cash. The market even saw refinancing activity in mortgages with note rates below the prevailing market rate. In 2002, CPRs on some discount cohorts hit the low to middle teens, which many participants attributed to cash-out refinancing. Resetting a mortgage 50 basis points higher can nevertheless often lead to overall lower debt servicing when borrowers use cash-out refis to consolidate auto loans, credit cards and other higher-rate unsecured borrowings.[1] In the early 2000s, this cash-out refinancing activity led to overall faster speeds and a higher S-curve for out-of-the-money cohorts. How does 2002-03 cash-out refi activity compare to today? In the early 2000s, issuance of cash-out mortgages, as a percentage of the total market, varied between 1% and 2.5% of the outstanding mortgage universe each month.

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Since the onset of the pandemic, that figure has not experienced the same kind of spike, hovering around just 0.9%.[2]

In 2002-03, most of these cash-out borrowers refinanced into lower rates, but a sufficient number took out mortgages at same or higher rates to drive prepayments on discount MBS into the low teens CPR (see black s-curve below). By comparison, out-of-the money speeds today (the blue s-curve) are approximately 4 CPR slower.

The nearly 30% rally in home prices during the pandemic has further strengthened a solid housing market. Today’s borrowers have substantial equity in their homes, leaving many homeowners with untapped borrowing power, shown in the market-implied LTVs below. From an origination standpoint, mortgage lenders have sufficient capacity to support any uptick in cash-out refinancing as rate-term refinancing volumes decline.

Any growth in cash-out refi issuance is likely to come on loans with note rates close to the prevailing mortgage rate. If a homeowner needs to generate cash for a large purchase, it can make economic sense to refinance an existing loan into a new loan with rates as much as 25bp or 50bp higher, rather than incur even higher (and shorter-term) interest rates on credit cards or personal loans. Therefore, any uptick in cash-out refinancing will likely have a larger effect on prepayment speeds for MBS that are either at-the-money or slightly out-of-the-money. This uptick may mitigate some of the extension risk in near-discount mortgages, especially in non-spec cohorts where refinancing frictions are lower. While the past two years have seen substantial changes, positive and negative, in overall refinancings, cash-out refis have largely not followed suit. But a significant home price rally, coupled with strong economic activity and excess originator capacity, could change that trend in the upcoming year.

[1] See RiskSpan for examples.

[2] To compute this statistic, we summed the originations of cash-out refi mortgages and divided by the total size of mortgages extant.

RiskSpan and Verisk Collaborate to Offer Climate Risk Analytics for Mortgage Finance

Mortgage analytics firm RiskSpan has collaborated with Verisk to create a first-of-its-kind solution for measuring and mitigating the risks of climate change to the housing finance industry. The collaboration unites RiskSpan’s Edge Platform for mortgage analytics with Verisk Extreme Event  Solutions’ proven set of models — relied on by leading insurance, re-insurance, corporate and government entities, to assess the risk from natural catastrophes and climate to a given location by providing a property-specific hazard risk metric.Verisk

“Verisk’s ground-up approach to property-specific risk analysis is the perfect complement to our loan-level approach to mortgage credit and prepayment modeling,” said Janet Jozwik, the managing director heading up RiskSpan’s contribution to the new partnership. “We are excited to layer Verisk’s unique property risk scoring into our existing credit and portfolio risk framework.”

“Our collaboration with RiskSpan will serve to greatly benefit the housing finance industry by adding critical data and analytics from Verisk’s catastrophe models during the loan screening process,” observed Roger Grenier, senior vice president of Verisk’s global resilience practice. “This added layer of portfolio management can help banks and financial institutions better understand the potential risk from extreme weather events to a given property.”

The risk to the housing finance industry from extreme events is significant. According to Verisk, 62 million residential locations are at moderate to extreme risk of flooding alone.

“We are thrilled to bring the powerful climate and hazard risk analytics of Verisk to our clients,” said Bernadette Kogler, chief executive officer, RiskSpan. “This alliance opens the door to a world of property-level data from the insurance industry that can have tremendous value for applications in the mortgage space.”

“The collaborative solution will bring together the best extreme event models, data and climate analytics to the mortgage finance industry,” concluded Bill Churney, president, Verisk’s Extreme Event Solutions unit. “With financial institutions facing increased pressure to factor climate risk into their decision making, we expect RiskSpan’s enhanced tools powered by Verisk to be a welcome addition to their risk management process.”

The collaboration offers two complementary products, including loan-level scoring and climate stress testing, with applications for loan screening, portfolio management, and financial disclosures.

About RiskSpan 

RiskSpan offers end-to-end solutions for data management, risk management analytics, and visualization on a highly secure, fast, and fully scalable platform that has earned the trust of the industry’s largest firms. Combining the strength of subject matter experts, quantitative analysts, and technologists, RiskSpan’s Edge Platform integrates a range of data-sets – structured and unstructured – and off-the-shelf analytical tools to provide you with powerful insights and a competitive advantage. Learn more at www.riskspan.com. 

About Extreme Event Solutions at Verisk

Extreme event solutions at Verisk (formerly AIR Worldwide) provides risk modeling solutions that help individuals, businesses, and society become more resilient to extreme events. In 1987, Verisk founded the catastrophe modeling industry and today models the risk from natural catastrophes, supply chain disruptions, terrorism, pandemics, casualty catastrophes, and cyber incidents. Insurance, reinsurance, financial, corporate, and government clients rely on Verisk’s advanced science, software, and consulting services for catastrophe risk management, insurance-linked securities, longevity modeling, site-specific engineering analyses, and agricultural risk management. Verisk’s extreme event solutions team is headquartered in Boston, with additional offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, please visit www.air-worldwide.com. For more information about Verisk, a leading data analytics provider serving customers in insurance, energy and specialized markets, and financial services, please visit www.verisk.com.

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How Has the First “Social” RMBS Performed – And What’s So Social About It?

Now that six months have passed since Angel Oak issued AOMT 2021-2 – hailed as the first U.S. non-Agency RMBS to qualify as a social bond [1] – we can compare preliminary collateral performance to other deals. Angel Oak’s 2021-1, from the same shelf and vintage – but without the social bond distinction – provides an apt control group. To set the stage for this performance comparison, we’ll first reexamine the compositional differences – and significant overlap – between the two collateral pools. What we will show:

  • The pool compositions are highly overlapping, with marginally greater risk concentrations of self-employment and alternative documentation in the social securitization, and the same WA (weighted average) coupon
  • The social collateral has outperformed the benchmark credit-wise in the early going
  • The social deal has exhibited some lock-in, i.e., slower refinancing, providing some very preliminary evidence that the borrowers are indeed underserved, and that investors may be rewarded if the social collateral’s credit performance holds
  • However, the credit mix of the social collateral has drifted riskier – more so than the benchmark – meaning the strong early credit performance of the social deal could reverse, and ongoing surveillance is warranted

New Loans or New Label?

The Social AOMT 2021-2 Is Similar to AOMT 2021-1

Figure 1 shows AOMT 2021-1 vs. 2021-2 in the Collateral Comparison screen of Edge, RiskSpan’s data and analytics platform. Clearly, the two pools were similar at origination, with highly overlapping distributions of FICO, LTV, and DTI and many other similar metrics.

So What’s Different – And How Different Is It?

The distinguishing principle of a social bond under Angel Oak’s framework is that it provides affordable home mortgages to those who often can’t get them because they don’t qualify under the automated underwriting processes of traditional lenders because of the exceptional nature of their sources of income. [2]

Angel Oak says the specific characteristic hindering the borrowers in the AOMT 2021-2 deal is self-employment. [3] Self-employed borrowers make up 94.4% of the pool (with a median annual income of $227,803) [4], up marginally from 86.5% in the 2021-1 deal [5]. As Figure 1 shows, the proportion of low documentation by balance was up from 87.5% in 2021-1 to 97.5% in 2021-2.

Also, Figure 1 shows that 2021-2’s FICOs and LTVs are slightly worse on average with slightly more tail risk, and the cash-out proportion is slightly riskier.

Compensating marginally for 2021-2 are slightly lower ARM proportions (0 vs. 0.8% for 2021-1), lower WA. DTI, and a higher proportion of owner-occupied (90% vs. 85%), which many view as credit-positive.

In summary, RiskSpan calculates 1.83 average risk layers per loan for the social 2021-2, slightly higher than 1.78 for 2021-1.

Notably the WA coupons for the two pools are the same.

Figure 1: Edge’s Collateral Comparison Screen Showing AOMT 2021-1 (aka AOAK 2101) vs. 2021-2 (aka AOAK 2102) at OriginationGraphSource: CoreLogic, RiskSpan

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In summary, it seems that most – though perhaps not all – of the loans that qualified for AOMT 2021-2 would have qualified for AOMT 2021-1 and other non-QM deals.

Kroll’s new issue report seems to acknowledge that what is new about 2021-2 is mostly the formal emphasis on the social benefits of the loans made, and less a change in the kinds of loans made: “While many of [Angel Oak’s] lending programs overlap meaningfully with other non-QM lender’s offerings, the actions taken by AOCA generally indicate management’s attention to ESG related matters. Specifically, AOCA’s SBF puts focus on the impact that credit availability for underserved borrowers can have.” [4]

A skeptical interpretation of the overlap between 2021-1 and the social 2021-2 collateral would be that the social claim is largely hollow. Another way of looking at it is that a financial market participant is finally taking credit for good work it has been largely doing all along. Angel Oak itself seems to take this latter view, saying, “Since 2011, AOCA has been implementing ESG principles within its non-qualified mortgage (non-QM) origination and securitization program to provide access to residential credit for underserved borrowers.” [2]

Either way, logical hypotheses would be that collateral performance will be similar between 2021-2 and 2021-1, with -2 showing (a) slightly more credit trouble and (b) slightly less able to refinance. Regarding the second hypothesis, logically it should challenge the premise that the deal serves underserved borrowers if its borrowers can refinance just as readily as others.

Early Performance of the Social Bonds

Let’s see how AOMT’s social 2021-2 has performed as benchmarked to 2021-1 during the first six and seven months, respectively, of available data.

Better Delinquency Trend Than the Benchmark

As Figure 2 shows, delinquencies opened higher for the social 2021-2 but have mostly cured. By contrast, delinquencies have trended up for 2021-1. So far, Angel Oak’s social origination is outperforming its non-social contemporary from a credit standpoint.

Figure 2: AOMT 2021-2 Delinquencies Began Higher, Have Mostly Cured; AOMT 2021-1’s Delinquencies Have Trended Up 60 day-plus delinquency share over time, AOMT 2021-2 vs AOMT 2021-1 Source: CoreLogic, RiskSpan

Significantly Better Credit Performance by the Social DSCR Investor Loans

A small slice of the deals driving outsized delinquencies in 2021-1 are the DSCR-based investor loans (Figure 3). In the social 2021-2, delinquencies among this cohort are zero. We plot the spreads at origination (SATO) of this cohort alongside delinquencies to show that the DSCR loans in 2021-2 had lower credit spreads by about 20bps. Perhaps the investor loans pooled into 2021-2 were managed to higher standards for DSCR, rent rolls or other attributes (their LTVs and ages are similar).

Figure 3: Delinquencies – and SATOs – Are Lower Among DSCR-Based Investor Loans in AOMT 2021-2 60 day-plus delinquency share and WA SATOs over time, AOMT 2021-2 vs. AOMT 2021-1, includes Detailed Doc Type = DSCR Investor Cash Flow.Source: CoreLogic, RiskSpan

Ironically, The Full Doc Loans Are the Social Deal’s Blemish

The slice of full doc loans in the social 2021-2 have a much lower WA FICO than the low doc loans in the same deal or either the low or full doc loans in 2021-1 (see the green dotted line in Figure 4). Correspondingly, these full doc loans have the highest delinquent share among the four cohorts in Figure 4 (green solid line). If this pattern holds, it highlights the viability of using tradeoffs to manage down the overall credit risk represented by loans with risky attributes.

Figure 4: AOMT 2021-2’s Full Doc Loans Are the Most Delinquent Doc Cohort from Either Deal 60 day-plus delinquency share and WA FICOs over time, AOMT 2021-2 vs. AOMT 2021-1 and Full Doc vs. Low Doc Source: CoreLogic, RiskSpan

Slower Refinances Than the Benchmark

While credit performance has been better for the social deal than we might expect, voluntary prepays so far (Figure 5) support our hypothesis that the social deal should prepay slower. Note that we plot voluntary prepays over loan age, and that all loans from this recent non-QM vintage have similar (and highly positive) refinance incentive. If the social deal’s refinances remain slower, that accomplishes two significant things: 1) it supports the claim that the social borrowers are indeed underserved; 2) if combined with sustained credit performance, it provides support in terms of financial risk and return for the price premiums that social bonds tend to command.

Figure 5: AOMT 2021-2 Is Refinancing Slower CRR over loan age, AOMT 2021-2 vs. AOMT 2021-1, July 2021-January 2022 Source: CoreLogic, RiskSpan

The Relative Refinance Slowness Is From the Large Balance Loans

The overall slowness of the social collateral in Figure 5 is driven by large loans. Figure 6 shows that, among loans <$417K, the prepay patterns of 2021-1 and 2021-2 are similar, while among loans > $417K, the prepays of 2021-2 are consistently slower. This may suggest that large loans with complex sources of income are particularly hard to underwrite.

Figure 6: The Social Deal’s Low-Balance Loans Refi Similar to Benchmark, But Large Balances Have Been Slower CRR over loan age, AOMT 2021-2 vs. AOMT 2021-1, bucketed by loan size, July 2021-January 2022 Source: CoreLogic, RiskSpan

 

Updated Collateral Mix

The Social Deal’s Credit Mix Has Drifted Riskier, Warranting Ongoing Monitoring

While the early performance of the social collateral is positive, Figure 7 provides reason for concern and ongoing watchfulness. Since origination, the composition of the social 2021-2 has drifted riskier in all respects except slight improvements in WA DTI and WA LTV. Its LTV tails, WA FICO, and FICO tails; proportions of cash-out, low doc, non-owner-occupied; and average overall risk layers are all somewhat riskier.

The drift for 2021-1 has been more mixed. Like 2021-2, it is safer with respect to WA DTI and WA LTV. Unlike 2021-2, it is also safer with respect to LTV tails, FICO tails, and cash-out proportion. Like 2021-2, it is riskier with respect to WA FICO; proportions of low doc and non-owner-occupied; and average overall risk layers.

We will continue to monitor whether this composition drift drives differential performance going forward.

Figure 7: Edge’s Collateral Comparison Screen Showing AOMT 2021-1 (aka AOAK 2101) vs. 2021-2 (aka AOAK 2102) updated to the Current Factor DateGraphSource: CoreLogic, RiskSpan

Using Edge, you can examine prepay or credit performance of loan subsets defined by any characteristics, and generate aging curves, time series, or S-curves.

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[1] https://angeloakhomeloans.com/angel-oak-capital-advisors-delivers-first-to-market-non-agency-social-bond-securitization/

[2] https://www.issgovernance.com/file/spo/spo-20210408-angel-oak.pdf

[3]  https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210517005728/en/Angel-Oak-Capital-Advisors-Delivers-First-to-Market-Non-Agency-Social-Bond-Securitization

[4]  https://www.kbra.com/documents/report/48093/angel-oak-mortgage-trust-2021-2-aomt-2021-2-new-issue-report

[5]  https://www.fitchratings.com/research/structured-finance/angel-oak-mortgage-trust-2021-1-us-rmbs-02-03-2021

Mortgage Data and the Cloud – Now is the Time

As the trend toward cloud computing continues its march across an ever-expanding set of industries, it is worth pausing briefly to contemplate how it can benefit those of us who work with mortgage data for a living.  

The inherent flexibility, efficiency and scalability afforded by cloud-native systems driving this trend are clearly of value to users of financial services data. Mortgages in particular, each accompanied by a dizzying array of static and dynamic data about borrower incomes, employment, assets, property valuations, payment histories, and detailed loan terms, stand to reap the benefits of cloud and the shift to this new form of computing.  

And yet, many of my colleagues still catch themselves referring to mortgage data files as “tapes.” 

Migrating to cloud evokes some of the shiniest words in the world of computing – cost reduction, security, reliability, agility – and that undoubtedly creates a stir. Cloud’s ability to provide on-demand access to servers, storage locations, databases, software and applications via the internet, along with the promise to ‘only pay for what you use’ further contributes to its popularity. 

These benefits are especially well suited to mortgage data. They include:  

  • On-demand self-service and the ability to provision resources without human interference – of particular use for mortgage portfolios that are constantly changing in both size and composition. 
  • Broad network access, diverse platforms having access to multiple resources available over the network – valuable when origination, secondary marketing, structuring, servicing, and modeling tools are seeking to simultaneously access the same evolving datasets for different purposes. 
  • Multi-tenancy and resource pooling, allowing resource sharing while maintaining privacy and security. 
  • Rapid elasticity and scalability, quick acquiring and disposing of resources and allowing quick but measured scaling based on demand. 

Cloud-native systems reduce ownership and operational expenses, increase speed and agility, facilitate innovation, improve client experience, and even enhance security controls. 

There is nothing quite like mortgage portfolios when it comes to massive quantities of financial data, often PII-laden, with high security requirements. The responsibility for protecting borrower privacy is the most frequently cited reason for financial institution reluctance when it comes to cloud adoption. But perhaps counterintuitively, migrating on-premises applications to cloud actually results in a more controlled environment as it provides for backup and access protocols that are not as easily implemented with on-premise solutions. 

The cloud affords a sophisticated and more efficient way of securing mortgage data. In addition to eliminating costs associated with running and maintaining data centers, the cloud enables easy and fast access to data and applications anywhere and at any time. As remote work takes hold as a more long-term norm, cloud-native platform help ensure employees can work effectively regardless of their location. Furthermore, the scalability of cloud-native data centers allows holders of mortgage assets to grow and expand storage capabilities as the portfolio grows and reduce it when it contracts. The cloud protects mortgage data from security breaches or disaster events, because the loan files are (by definition) backed up in a secure, remote location and easily restored without having to invest in expensive data retrieval methods.  

This is not to say that migrating to the cloud is without its challenges. Entrusting sensitive data to a new third-party partner and relying on its tech to remain online will always carry some measure of risk. Cloud computing, like any other innovation, comes with its own advantages and disadvantages, and redundancies mitigate virtually all of these uncertainties. Ultimately, the upside of being able work with mortgage data on cloud-native solutions far outweighs the drawbacks. The cloud makes it possible for processes to become more efficient in real-time, without having to undergo expensive hardware enhancements. This in turn creates a more productive environment for data analysts and modelers seeking to give portfolio managers, servicers, securitizers, and others who routinely deal with mortgage assets the edge they are looking for.

Kriti Asrani is an associate data analyst at RiskSpan.

Want to read more on this topic? Check out COVID-19 and the Cloud.

Will a Rising VQI Materially Impact Servicing Costs and MSR Valuations?

VQI-GraphVQI-Current-Layers-September-2021

RiskSpan’s Vintage Quality Index computes and aggregates the percentage of Agency originations each month with one or more “risk factors” (low-FICO, high DTI, high LTV, cash-out refi, investment properties, etc.). Months with relatively few originations characterized by these risk factors are associated with lower VQI ratings. As the historical chart above shows, the index maxed out (i.e., had an unusually high number of loans with risk factors) leading up to the 2008 crisis.

RiskSpan uses the index principally to fine-tune its in-house credit and prepayment models by accounting for shifts in loan composition by monthly cohort.

Will a rising VQI translate into higher servicing costs?

The Vintage Quality Index continued to climb during the third quarter of 2021, reaching a value of 85.10, compared to 83.40 in the second quarter. The higher index value means that a higher percentage of loans were originated with one or more defined risk factors.

The rise in the index during Q3 was less dramatic than Q2’s increase but nevertheless continues a trend going back to the start of the pandemic. The increase continues to be driven by a subset of risk factors, notably the share of cash-out refinances and investor properties (both up significantly) and high-DTI loans (up modestly). On balance, fewer loans were characterized by the remaining risk metrics.

What might this mean for servicing costs?

Servicing costs are highly sensitive to loan performance. Performing Agency loans are comparatively inexpensive to service, while non-performing loans can cost thousands of dollars per year more — usually several times the amount a servicer can expect to earn in servicing fees and other ancillary servicing revenue.

For this reason, understanding the “vintage quality” of newly originated mortgage pools is an element to consider when forecasting servicing cash flows (and, by extension, MSR pricing).

Each of the risk layers that compose the VQI contributes to marginally higher default risk (and, therefore, a theoretically lower servicing valuation). But not all risk layers affect expected cash flows equally. It is also important to consider the VQI in relationship to its history. While the index has been rising since the pandemic, it remains relatively low by historical standards — still below a local high in early 2018 and certainly nowhere near the heights reached leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.

A look at the individual risk metrics driving the increase would also seem to reduce any cause for alarm. While the ever-increasing number of loans with high debt-to-income ratios could be a matter of some concern, the other two principal contributors to the overall VQI rise — loans on investment properties and cash-out refinances — do not appear to jeopardize servicing cash flows to the same degree as low credit scores and high DTI ratios do.

Consequently, while the gradual increase in loans with one or more risk factors bears watching, it likely should not have a significant bearing (for now) on how investors price Agency MSR assets.

VQI-Risk-Layer-All-Issued-Loans-September-2021VQI-Risk-Layers-FICO-660-September-2021

VQI-LTV-80-Shared-of-Issued-Loans-September-2021 VQI-Debt-to-Income-45-Share-of-Issued-Loans-September-2021 VQI-Adjustabel-Rate-Share-of-issued-Loans-September-2021 VQI-Loans-with-Subordinate-Financing-September-2021-1024x399.png

Population assumptions:

  • Monthly data for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
  • Loans originated more than three months prior to issuance are excluded because the index is meant to reflect current market conditions.
  • Loans likely to have been originated through the HARP program, as identified by LTV, MI coverage percentage, and loan purpose, are also excluded. These loans do not represent credit availability in the market as they likely would not have been originated today but for the existence of HARP.

Data assumptions:

  • Freddie Mac data goes back to 12/2005. Fannie Mae only back to 12/2014.
  • Certain fields for Freddie Mac data were missing prior to 6/2008.

GSE historical loan performance data release in support of GSE Risk Transfer activities was used to help back-fill data where it was missing.

An outline of our approach to data imputation can be found in our VQI Blog Post from October 28, 2015.

Non-Linear Paths to Leadership: RiskSpan to Join Structured Finance Association WiS NextGen Panel

On Tuesday, November 16th RiskSpan CEO Bernadette Kogler joined fellow Women in Securitization NextGen panelists Beth O’Brien, Adama Kah, and Libby Cantrill, CFA to discuss Seizing Opportunites at Every Stage of Your Career, moderated by Structured Finance Association President Kristi Leo.

Watch here: https://structuredfinance.org/women-in-securitization/ Wis NextGen:Non-Linear Paths to Leadership

Topics included:

  • Why it’s essential to take risks in your career
  • How to seize opportunities and take on challenges
  • Leveraging an entrepreneurial spirit when exploring possibilities that don’t align with a preset career path – and taking that leap

RiskSpan, Arete Risk Advisors Announce Strategic Consulting Partnership

AreteRiskSpan, a leading provider of data and analytics solutions to the mortgage industry, has announced a partnership with Arete Risk Advisors, LLC, to complement RiskSpan’s existing team of data science, modeling, and financial engineering consultants.  A woman-owned firm boasting a deep bench of experienced housing finance professionals, Arete delivers unparalleled expertise in applying operations, information technology, governance, risk management, and internal controls best practices to every aspect of home lending.  Arete is led by managing partner Patricia Black, an industry-leading executive in home lending. Prior to founding Arete, Patricia served as Fannie Mae’s Chief Audit Executive, Chief of Staff at Caliber Home Loans, the Head of Sales and Operations at SoFi, and a Senior Manager at KPMG Consulting/BearingPoint.    “I’m very excited to be involved with a growing woman-owned business while simultaneously expanding our own advisory offering,” said Bernadette Kogler, Co-Founder and CEO of RiskSpan. “Arete’s emphasis on delivering top-qualify mortgage compliance, controls, governance, and operations services creates a natural synergy with RiskSpan’s data and modeling capabilities. This partnership promises to benefit clients of both firms.”  Patricia Black added, “the opportunity to grow with Bernadette and the RiskSpan team to expand women-owned businesses in the home lending space is inspiring and I am excited about contributing to the continued success of Bernadette and her team.”  Learn more about Arete’s range of services at www.areteriskadvisors.com. Questions about the firm may be directed to info@areteriskadvisors.com.  About RiskSpan  RiskSpan offers end-to-end solutions for data management, risk analytics, and visualization on a highly secure, fast, and fully scalable, cloud-native platform that has earned the trust of the mortgage and structured finance industry’s largest firms. Combining the strength of subject matter experts, quantitative analysts, and technologists, RiskSpan’s Edge Platform integrates a range of datasets – structured and unstructured – and off-the-shelf analytical tools providing users with powerful insights and a competitive advantage. Learn more at www.riskspan.com. 

Improving the Precision of MSR Pricing Using Cloud-Native Loan-Level Analytics (Part I)

Traditional MSR valuationTake Away approaches based on rep lines and loan characteristics important primarily to prepayment models fail to adequately account for the significant impact of credit performance on servicing cash flows – even on Agency loans. Incorporating both credit and prepayment modeling into an MSR valuation regime requires a loan-by-loan approach—rep lines are simply insufficient to capture the necessary level of granularity. Performing such an analysis while evaluating an MSR portfolio containing hundreds of thousands of loans for potential purchase has historically been viewed as impractical. But thanks to today’s cloud-native technology, loan-level MSR portfolio pricing is not just practical but cost-effective. Introduction Mortgage Servicing Rights (MSRs) entitle the asset owner to receive a monthly fee in return for providing billing, collection, collateral management and recovery services with respect to a pool of mortgages on behalf of the beneficial owner(s) of those mortgages. This servicing fee consists primarily of two components based on the current balance of each loan:  a base servicing fee (commonly 25bps of the loan balance) and an excess servicing fee.  The latter is simply the difference between each loan rate and the sum of the pass-through rate of interest and the base servicing. The value of a portfolio of MSRs is determined by modeling the projected net cash flows to the owner and discounting them to the present using one of two methodologies:

  1. Static or Single-Path Pricing: A single series of net servicing cash flows are generated using current interest and mortgage rates which are discounted to a present value using a discount rate reflecting current market conditions.
  2. Stochastic or Option-Adjusted Spread (OAS) Pricing: Recognizing that interest rates will vary over time, a statistical simulation of interest rates is used to generate many time series (typically 250 to 1,000) of net servicing cash flows.  Each time series of cash flows is discounted at a specified spread over a simulated base curve (generally the LIBOR or Treasury curve) and the resulting present value is averaged across all of the paths.

While these two pricing methodologies have different characteristics and are based on very different conceptual frameworks, they both strongly depend on the analyst’s ability to generate reliable forecasts of net servicing cashflows.  As the focus of this white paper is to discuss the key factors that determine the net cashflows, we are indifferent here as to the ultimate methodology used to convert those cashflows into a present value and for simplicity will look to project a single path of net cash flows.  RiskSpan’s Edge platform supports both static and OAS pricing and RiskSpan’s clients use each and sometimes both to value their mortgage instruments.

Modeling Mortgage Cash Flows Residential mortgages are complex financial instruments. While they are, at their heart, a fixed income instrument with a face amount and a fixed or a floating rate of interest, the ability of borrowers to voluntarily prepay at any time adds significant complexity.  This prepayment option can be triggered by an economic incentive to refinance into a lower interest rate, by a decision to sell the underlying property or by a change in life circumstances leading the borrower to pay off the mortgage but retain the property. The borrower also has a non-performance option. Though not usually exercised voluntarily, forbearance options made available to borrowers in response to Covid permitted widespread voluntary exercise of this option without meaningful negative consequences to borrowers. This non-performance option ranges from something as simple as a single late payment up to cessation of payments entirely and forfeiture of the underlying property. Forbearance (a payment deferral on a mortgage loan permitted by the servicer or by regulation, such as the COVID-19 CARES Act) became a major factor in understanding the behavior of mortgage cash flows in 2020. Should a loan default, ultimate recovery depends on a variety of factors, including the loan-to-value ratio, external credit support such as primary mortgage insurance as well as costs and servicer advances paid from liquidation proceeds. Both the prepayment and credit performance of mortgage loans are estimated with the use of statistical models which draw their structure and parameters from an extremely large dataset of historical performance.  As these are estimated with reference to backward-looking experience, analysts often adjust the models to reflect their experience adjusted for future expectations. Investors in GSE-guaranteed mortgage pass-through certificates are exposed to voluntary and, to a far less extent, involuntary (default) prepayments of the underlying mortgages.  If the certificates were purchased at a premium and prepayments exceed expectations, the investor’s yield will be reduced.  Conversely, if the certificates were purchased at a discount and prepayments accelerated, the investor’s yield will increase.  Guaranteed pass-through certificate investors are not exposed to the credit performance of the underlying loans except to the extent that delinquencies may suppress voluntary prepayments. Involuntary prepayments and early buyouts of delinquent loans from MBS pools are analogous to prepayments from a cash flow perspective when it comes to guaranteed Agency securities. Investors in non-Agency securities and whole loans are exposed to the same prepayment risk as guaranteed pass-through investors are, but they are also exposed to the credit performance of each loan. And MSR investors are exposed to credit risk irrespective of whether the loans they service are guaranteed. Here is why. The mortgage servicing fee can be simplistically represented by an interest-only (IO) strip carved off of the interest payments on a mortgage. Net MSR cash flows are obtained by subtracting a fixed servicing cost. Securitized IOs are exposed to the same factors as pass-through certificates, but their sensitivity to those factors is magnitudes greater because a prepayment constitutes the termination of all further cash flows – no principal is received.  Consequently, returns on IO strips are very volatile and sensitive to interest rates via the borrower’s prepayment incentive. While subtracting fixed costs from the servicing fee is still a common method of generating net MSR cash flows, it is a very imprecise methodology, subject to significant error. The largest component of this error arises from the fact that servicing cost is highly sensitive to the credit state of a mortgage loan. Is the loan current, requiring no intervention on the part of the servicer to obtain payment, or is the loan delinquent, triggering additional, and potentially costly, servicer processes that attempt to restore the loan to current? Is it seriously delinquent, requiring a still higher level of intervention, or in default, necessitating a foreclosure and liquidation effort? According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the cost of servicing a non-performing loan ranged from eight to twenty times the cost of servicing a performing loan during the ten-year period from 2009 to 1H2019 (Source: Servicing Operations Study and Forum; PGR 1H2019). Using 2014 as both the mid-point of this ratio and of the time period under consideration, the direct cost of servicing a performing loan was $156, compared to $2,000 for a non-performing loan. Averaged across both performing and non-performing loans, direct servicing costs were $171 per loan, with an additional cost of $31 per loan arising from unreimbursed expenditures related to foreclosure, REO and other costs, plus an estimated $58 per loan of corporate administration expense, totaling $261 per loan. The average loan balance of FHLMC and FNMA loans in 2014 was approximately $176,000, translating to an annual base servicing fee of $440. The margins illustrated by these figures demonstrate the extreme sensitivity of net servicing cash flows to the credit performance of the MSR portfolio. After prepayments, credit performance is the most important factor determining the economic return from investing in MSRs.  A 1% increase in non-performing loans from the 10yr average of 3.8% results in a $20 per loan net cash flow decline across the entire portfolio.  Consequently, for servicers who purchase MSR portfolios, careful integration of credit forecasting models into the MSR valuation process, particularly for portfolio acquisitions, is critical. RiskSpan’s MSR engine integrates both prepayment and credit models, permitting the precise estimation of net cash flows to MSR owners. The primary process affecting the cash inflow to the servicer is prepayment; when a loan prepays, the servicing fee is terminated. The cash outflow side of the equation depends on a number of factors:

  1. First and foremost, direct servicing cost is extremely sensitive to loan performance. The direct cost of servicing rises rapidly as delinquency status becomes increasingly severe. Direct servicing cost of a 30-day delinquent loan varies by servicer but can be as high as 350% of a performing loan. These costs rise to 600% of a performing loan’s cost at 60 days delinquent.
  2. Increasing delinquency causes other costs to escalate, including the cost of principal and interest as well as tax and escrow advances, non-reimbursable collateral protection, foreclosure and liquidation expenses. Float decreases, reducing interest earnings on cash balances.

    Improving-MSR-Pricing-GraphSource: Average servicing cost by delinquency state as supplied by several leading servicers of Agency and non-Agency mortgages.

RiskSpan’s MSR platform incorporates the full range of input parameters necessary to fully characterize the positive and negative cash flows arising from servicing. Positive cash flows include the servicing and other fees collected directly from borrowers as well as various types of ancillary and float income. Major contributors to negative cash flows include direct labor costs associated with performing servicing activities as well as unreimbursed foreclosure and liquidation costs, compensating interest and costs associated with financing principal, interest and escrow advances on delinquent loans. The net cash flows determined at the loan level are aggregated across the entire MSR portfolio and the client’s preferred pricing methodology is applied to calculate a portfolio value.

Improving-MSR-Pricing-Graph

Aggregation of MSR Portfolio Cash Flows – Loan-by-Loan vs “Rep Lines”

Historically, servicer net cash flows were determined using a simple methodology in which the base servicing fee was reduced by the servicing cost, and forecast prepayments were projected using a prepayment model. The impact of credit performance on net cash flows was explicitly considered by only a minority of practitioners.

Because servicing portfolios can contain hundreds of thousands or millions of loans, the computational challenge of generating net servicing cash flows was quite high. As the industry moved increasingly towards using OAS pricing and risk methodologies to evaluate MSRs, this challenge was multiplied by 250 to 1,000, depending on the number of paths used in the stochastic simulation.

In order to make the computational challenge more tractable, loans in large portfolios have historically been allocated to buckets according to the values of the characteristics of each loan that most explained its performance. In a framework that considered prepayment risk to be the major factor affecting MSR value, the superset of characteristics that mattered were those that were inputs to the prepayment model. This superset was then winnowed down to a handful of characteristics that were considered most explanatory. Each bucket would be converted to a “rep line” that represented the average of the values for each loan that were input into the prepayment models.

Improving-MSR-Pricing-Graph

Medium-sized servicers historically might have created 500 to 1,500 rep lines to represent their portfolio. Large servicers today may use tens of thousands.

The core premise supporting the distillation of a large servicing portfolio into a manageable number of rep lines is that each bucket represents a homogenous group of loans that will perform similarly, so that the aggregated net cash flows derived from the rep lines will approximate the performance of the sum of all the individual loans to a desired degree of precision.

The degree of precision obtained from using rep lines was acceptable for valuing going-concern portfolios, particularly if variations in the credit of individual loans and the impact of credit on net cash flows were not explicitly considered.  Over time, movement in MSR portfolio values would be driven mostly by prepayments, which themselves were driven by interest rate volatility. If the modeled value diverged sufficiently from “fair value” or a mark provided by an external provider, a valuation adjustment might be made and reported, but this was almost always a result of actual prepayments deviating from forecast.

Once an analyst looks to incorporate credit performance into MSR valuation, the number of meaningful explanatory loan characteristics grows sharply.  Not only must one consider all the variables that are used to project a mortgage’s cash flows according to its terms (including prepayments), but it also becomes necessary to incorporate all the factors that help one project exercise of the “default option.” Suddenly, the number of loans that could be bucketed together and be considered homogenous with respect to prepayment and credit performance would drop sharply; the number of required buckets would increase dramatically –to the point where the number of rep lines begins to rival the number of loans. The sheer computational power needed for such complex processing has only recently become available to most practitioners and requires a scalable, cloud-native solution to be cost effective.

Two significant developments have forced mortgage servicers to more precisely project net mortgage cash flows:

  1. As the accumulation of MSRs by large market participants through outright purchase, rather than through loan origination, has been growing dramatically, imprecision in valuation became less tolerable as it could result in the servicer bidding too low or too high for a servicing package.
  2. FASB Accounting Standard 2016-13 obligated entities holding “financial assets and net investment in leases that are not accounted for at fair value through net income” to estimate “incurred losses,” or estimated futures losses over the life of the asset. While the Standard does not necessarily apply to MSRs because most MSR investors account for the asset at fair value and flow fair value mark-to-market through income, it did lead to a statement from the major regulators:

“If a financial asset does not share risk characteristics with other financial assets, the new accounting standard requires expected credit losses to be measured on an individual asset basis.” 

(Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, National Credit Union Administration, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “Joint Statement on the New Accounting Standard on Financial Instruments – Credit Losses.” June 17, 2016.).

The result of these developments is that a number of large servicers are revisiting their bucketing methodologies and considering using loan-level analyses to better incorporate the impact of credit on MSR value, particularly when purchasing new packages of MSRs. By enabling MSR investors to re-combine and re-aggregate cash flow results on the fly, loan-level projections open the door to a host of additional, scenario-based analytics. RiskSpan’s cloud-native Edge Platform is uniquely positioned to support these emerging methodologies because it was envisioned and built from the ground up as a loan-level analytical engine. The flexibility afforded by its parallel computing framework allows for complex net-cash-flow calculations on hundreds of thousands of individual mortgage loans simultaneously. The speed and scalability this affords makes the Edge Platform ideally suited for pricing even the largest portfolios of MSR assets and making timely trading decisions with confidence.

In Part II of this series, we will delve into property-level risk characteristics—factors that are not easily rolled up into portfolio rep lines and must be evaluated at the loan level—impact credit risk and servicing cash flows. We will also quantify the impact of a loan-level analysis incorporating these factors on an MSR valuation.

Contact us to learn more.

How Are Ginnie’s New RG Pools Performing?

In February of this year, the Ginnie Mae II program began guaranteeing securities backed by pools of mortgages previously bought out of Ginnie Mae securities because of delinquency. In order to qualify for these new re-performing pools (known as “RG pools”) a loan must meet two (related) conditions: 

  • Borrower has made at least six months of timely payments prior to pool issuance. 
  • Pool issue date is at least 210 days from when the mortgage was last delinquent. 

The novelty of RG pools raises questions about their composition and performance relative to other Ginnie Mae pools. While it remains too early to make many conclusive statements, a preliminary look at the prepayment data indicates speeds somewhere between those of similar vintage Ginnie Mae multi and custom pools, with typical variability from servicer to servicer.  

In this post, we discuss the prepayment behaviors we have observed over the first seven months of RG pool securitization, issuance patterns, and collateral characteristics. 

Prepayments 

Latest September prepayment prints show that RG pools’ speeds generally fell in between those of similar coupon/vintage multi and custom pools.  Below charts shows that 2015/2016 3.5% RG pools prepaid at around 37-38 CPR in September, a couple of CPR slower than similarly aged multi pools and almost 10 CPR faster than custom pools.  

Prepayments for G2 3.5% RG, Custom and Multi Pools by Vintages, September Factor Month Prepayments for G2 3.5% RG Custom and Multi Pools by vintages, Sept FactorMonthNote: Loan level data

Below, we plot S-curves for 49 to 72 wala RG loans against S-curves for similarly aged multi and other custom loans from April to September factor months.  Speeds for RG loans with 25 to 100 bp of rate incentives have prepaid in mid-30s CPRs (Green line in below figure).  During the same period, similar multi pools have prepaid 5 to 8 CPR faster (blue line) than RG pools while similar custom pools have prepaid around 5 CPR slower (black line).  We also overlaid a s-curve for 7 to 18 wala G2 multi pools as a comparison (orange line).

S-curves for RG, Custom and Multi Pools (49 to 72 WALA) April to September Factor Months 
GNMA PoolNote: Loan level data, orange line is the s-curve for 7-18 wala G2 multi pools with a one-year lookback period 

Not surprisingly, prepayment behavior differs by servicer. Wells-serviced RG pools that are seasoned 49 to 72 months with 25 to 100 bp of rate incentives appear to be prepaying in low 30s CPRs (black line in below figure).  Similar loans from Penny Mac are prepaying 5 to 10 CPR faster, which tends to be the case for non-RG loans as well. 

S-curves for RG loans by servicers, 49 to 72 WALA, April to September Factor MonthsGNMA PoolsNote: Loan level data 

While the re-performing loans that are being securitized into RG pools are already seasoned loans, prepayments have been increasing as pool seasons.  For example, one-month old RG 3.5% pools have prepaid at 27 CPR while 6- and 7-month 3.5% pools prepaid at 45-50 CPR (black line below). In addition, overall prepayment speeds for same-pool-age 3.0%, 3.5%, and 4.0% have been on top of each other. 

 Prepayments for RG 3.0%, 3.5% and 4.0% Pools by Pool Age, March to September 2021 GNMA PoolsNote: only showing data points for cohorts with more than 50 loans

Issuance Volume 

Following a brief ramp-up period in February and March, issuance of RG pools has averaged around $2 billion (and roughly 300 pools) per month for the past five months (see Issuance chart below). The outstanding UPB of these pools stands at nearly $11 billion as of the September factor month. 

GNMA PoolsNote: RiskSpan uses reporting month as a factor month. For this chart, we adjust our factor date by one month to match the collection period.

RG pools already account for a sizable share of Ginnie II custom issuance, as illustrated in the following chart, making up 18% of G2 custom issuance and 3% of all G2 issuance since April.

GNMA PoolsNote: RiskSpan uses reporting month as a factor month. For this chart, we adjust our factor date by one month to match the collection period. 

RG Pool Characteristics 

Nearly all of RG pool issuance has been in 3.0% to 4.5% coupons, with a plurality at 3.5%. As of the September factor month, almost $4 billion (37%) of the outstanding RG pools are in 3.5% coupons. The 4% coupon accounted for the next-largest share–$2.5 billion (23%)—followed by $2.3 billion in 3.0% (20.9%) and $1.3 billion in 4.5% (11.8%). 

RG Pool Outstanding Amount by Coupon — September Factor Month GNMA Pools

 The following table compares the characteristics of RG pools issued since February with those of G2 single-family custom and multi pools issued during the same period.  The table highlights some interesting differences: 

  • Issuance of RG pools seems to be concentrated in higher coupons (3% to 4%) compared to issuances for G2 custom pools (concentrated on 2.5% and 3.0%) and G2 multi-lender pools (concentrated on 2.0% and 2.5%). 
  • Loan sizes in RG pools tend to fall between those of G2 customs and smaller than G2 multis.  For example, WAOLS for 3.5% RG pools is around 245k and is around 50k smaller than multi pools and 30k larger than other custom pools. 
  • RG pools consist almost exclusively of FHA loans while G2 multis have a much higher share of VA loans.  Almost 98% of 3.5% RG loans are FHA loans. 

 G2 RG vs. G2 Custom and G2 Multi (pools issued since February), Stat as of September Factor Month GNMA Pools

Wells Fargo and Penny Mac are far and away the leaders in RG issuance, accounting collectively for 62% of outstanding RG pools.  

RG Pools by Servicer, September Factor Month GNMA Pools

 How to Run RG Pools in Edge Perspective 

Subscribers to Edge Perspective can run these comparisons (and countless others) themselves using the “GN RG” pool type filter. The “Custom/Multi-lender” filter can likewise be applied to separate those pools in G2SF. 

Contact Us

Contact us if you are interested in seeing variations on this theme. Using Edge, we can examine any loan characteristic and generate an S-curve, aging curve, or time series.

An Emerging Climate Risk Consensus for Mortgages?

That climate change poses a growing—and largely unmeasured—risk to housing and mortgage investors is not news. As is often the case with looming threats whose timing and magnitude are only vaguely understood, increased natural hazard risks have most often been discussed anecdotally and in broad generalities. This, however, is beginning to change as the reality of these risks becomes increasingly clear to an increasing number of market participants and industry-sponsored research begins to emerge.

This past week’s special report by the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Research Institute for Housing America, The Impact of Climate Change on Housing and Housing Finance, raises a number of red flags about our industry’s general lack of preparedness and the need for the mortgage industry to take climate risk seriously as a part of a holistic risk management framework. Clearly this cannot happen until appropriate risk scenarios are generated and introduced into credit and prepayment models.

One of the puzzles we are focusing on here at RiskSpan is an approach to creating climate risk stress testing that can be easily incorporated into existing mortgage modeling frameworks—at the loan level—using home price projections and other stress model inputs already in use. We are also partnering with firms who have been developing climate stress scenarios for insurance companies and other related industries to help ensure that the climate risk scenarios we create are consistent with the best and most recently scientific research available.

Also on the short-term horizon is the implementation of FEMA’s new NFIP premiums for Risk Rating 2.0. Phase I of this new framework will begin applying to all new policies issued on or after October 1, 2021. (Phase II kicks in next April.) We wrote about this change back in February when these changes were slated to take effect back in the spring. Political pressure, which delayed the original implementation may also impact the October date, of course. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this and are preparing to help our clients estimate the likely impact of FEMA’s new framework on mortgages (and the properties securing them) in their portfolios.

Finally, this past week’s SEC statement detailing the commission’s expectations for climate-related 10-K disclosures is also garnering significant (and warranted) attention. By reiterating existing guidelines around disclosing material risks and applying them specifically to climate change, the SEC is issuing an unmistakable warning shot at filing companies who fail to take climate risk seriously in their disclosures.

Contact us (or just email me directly if you prefer) to talk about how we are incorporating climate risk scenarios into our in-house credit and prepayment models and how we can help incorporate this into your existing risk management framework.  

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