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9/13/2024

Remarks by Acting President Sam Valverde at the Barclays U.S. Rates and Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) Conference

Hello, and thank you for the invitation to speak here this afternoon. Thank you to Barclays for hosting such a great conference. Ginnie Mae has worked with Barclays for many years, and we look forward to building on this partnership in the years ahead.

I had the pleasure of attending this conference last year, and I am so delighted to be here again this year and to see so many familiar faces. A special thank you to Ms. Macleod for hosting this prestigious event.

The U.S.-Japanese bilateral economic relationship is one of my country’s strongest and deepest partnerships, based on a history of shared values, mutual interests, and common goals. We are working together at all levels of government and the private sector to build a global partnership fit to address the complex, interconnected challenges of today and tomorrow. I am confident our partnership will be mutually beneficial in the years to come.

The continued economic partnership between the United States and this region is particularly important as we navigate how to promote our shared values of homeownership and care for seniors amid a myriad of factors impacting the post-pandemic global economy. Ginnie Mae is a great example of this collective work. Through regular exchanges of policy ideas with our peer institutions in the region and through investments in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities that bring our economies closer together, our work to create a more accessible and resilient housing market continues.

Ginnie Mae is a government-owned corporation that provides the full-faith and credit guaranty of the U.S. Government on the timely payment of principal and interest on MBS to investors.

We were chartered with the task of promoting access to mortgage credit nationwide, with a special emphasis on underserved groups, by improving the distribution of investment capital available for mortgage financing.

This mission is one Congress gave us, and our dedicated staff work tirelessly every day to realize it. In our 56 years of existence, we have not missed a single principal and interest payment to investors.

Our guaranty eliminates credit risk for investors, protecting against all default events: borrower defaults on mortgage payments, Issuer defaults on Guaranty Agreements, and natural disaster-induced defaults. And it’s this investor confidence in our guaranty that has created a deeply liquid market for our MBS. We participate in the second-largest fixed-income market in the world after U.S. Treasuries, with nearly $300 in average daily trading volume globally among the Agencies.

Ginnie Mae was there when the housing finance system in the United States was created, along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In 1970, Ginnie Mae became the first entity to issue a mortgage bond, and we have been leaders in the market ever since.

As with any capital markets-based approach to finance, the interplay between each group of stakeholders is integral. Ginnie Mae has long been a hub connecting bond issuers, investors, and borrowers. As we have before, we will continue to assess the interests of all stakeholders as we respond to market events.

Since we were last in Tokyo, the twin stories in the U.S. housing market are the cooling of inflation and the resulting potential of a cut in interest rates this month. Since its recent peak in May 2022, the consumer price index has dropped gradually, from close to 9 percent to 2.5 percent today. At the same time, the U.S. labor market remains strong but less tight than it was in 2023.

Although mortgage rates have come down slightly in anticipation of a rate cut, housing affordability remains constrained, given home price appreciation. The housing lock-in effect and the lack of supply have broadly elevated home prices across the country, putting housing affordability at a nearly two-decade low.

However, even in this economic environment, Ginnie Mae issuance remains strong. August issuance was $39 billion, a high watermark for the year. For nearly 2 years, Ginnie Mae has continued to see monthly issuance that has outpaced each of the government-sponsored enterprises.

Strong issuance in a calmer rate environment has transformed our coupon stack, with current offerings ranging from 2 to 7.5 percent. With more coupon selection options, favorable pricing, and yields to benchmark hovering around 140 basis points, the demand for Agency MBS remains very strong.

Foreign demand remains steady, with dollar-denominated securities representing a safe haven against geopolitical volatility. Our global investor base understands the safety of our government guaranty—and the depth and liquidity of the global MBS market.

Serious delinquencies, defined as three or more missed payments, represent less than 4 percent of our portfolio, reflecting prepandemic levels.

Given the mandate in our charter to provide liquidity for loans for low- and moderate-income borrowers (LMI), the growing interest in environment, social, and governance investment opportunities—or ESG—presents a unique opportunity for Ginnie Mae. Listening to the market and investors, we have built an ESG strategy centered around telling the story of our structural social impact. In disclosing data on key borrower characteristics, we can provide investors with security-level information to help meet ESG mandates using data-driven disclosures.

Using this data, we also produce a monthly ESG composite that provides deeper insight into our portfolio. In addition, we have created a Social Impact and Sustainability Framework that outlines how we think about what it means to be social.

Currently, our $2.6 trillion portfolio supports over 11 million homeowners— many of whom would not otherwise have access to affordable credit.

Three point two million of these borrowers, or approximately 30 percent, are classified as LMI borrowers. Approximately 40 percent of our portfolio by loan count represents first time home buyers.

Ginnie Mae’s HMBS or reverse mortgage portfolio supports almost 270K seniors, of which 74.2 percent are LMI households.

And as we have been telling this story of our structural impact, awareness across the market is increasing. For those users of Bloomberg, they began flagging our single-family MBS securities with their social flag earlier this month, and we anticipate other third-party platforms will also follow suit.

In anticipation of a rate cut, we are seeing mortgage rates fall to almost a 2-year low, with FHA and VA rates falling more steeply than conventional loans. As such, we expect refinancing activity to continue to gain steam as higher coupons move into the money. Potential decreases in mortgage rates resulting from changes in monetary policy on the horizon will make loans more refinance-eligible.

We know a rate cut will challenge convexity, prompting investors to adapt strategies accordingly. The market is preparing for an increase in refinancing activity, and since the beginning of the calendar year, we have seen some investors prioritize 100 percent FHA Federal Housing Administration custom pools over to-be-announced pools. As we look ahead, we remain confident that new monthly issuance will continue around the mid- to high-$30 billion per month, adding more diversity of coupon selection in the market.

We have added a meaningful supply of higher coupons over the last few years. With rates coming down gradually, we expect more supply in the lower coupons. Ultimately, this adds more diversity to what is currently being issued, supporting greater opportunity for coupon selection.

In a world in which the Fed is no longer buying agency MBS, we will focus on meeting and growing investor demand organically. We will continue to deepen existing partnerships, like our own, through greater engagement. We will continue listening to investor needs, particularly as we evaluate new disclosures.

We will also continue to investigate new markets. At the end of July, Ginnie Mae went on a discovery engagement in Mexico City. We were encouraged by the strong interest in our product and hope it will cultivate demand in the region and support even deeper liquidity for our program.

Thank you again for this invitation. I look forward to our panel discussion.

5/31/2024

Acting President Sam Valverde’s Statement to Financial Security Oversight Council

On Friday, May 10, 2024, Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) Acting President Sam Valverde provided the following statement to the Financial Security Oversight Council (FSOC):

Thank you, Madame Secretary, for the opportunity for Ginnie Mae to join the Council in this important work. Since the 2008 financial crisis, there has been a significant shift in the mortgage market away from traditional depository banks to nonbanks, or independent mortgage banks (IMBs). This shift is particularly pronounced in Government mortgage lending programs and Ginnie Mae's mortgage-backed securities (MBS) program.
While the growth of IMBs in the mortgage market introduced unique challenges, it has also expanded the reach of these programs. IMBs have met borrowers where they are, adopting new technologies and practices to better serve them, and have helped millions of Americans achieve homeownership. Their story of growth has also been the story of Ginnie Mae's growth, and our Issuers have helped advance our mission to expand access to affordable credit and housing to historically underserved communities, including low- to moderate-income borrowers, seniors, veterans, and rural and Tribal communities.
These federal programs were originally designed with depository institutions in mind. Independent mortgage banks lack the diverse funding sources that regulated banks enjoy. Their unique focus on housing finance has driven significant consumer benefits, but it also drives unique liquidity challenges in the housing market precisely when liquidity is most needed—to support loss mitigation and orderly servicing transfers during a downturn.
We at Ginnie Mae have been raising this source of concern for over a decade. We have spent just as long deploying our existing authorities to develop a suite of risk management and oversight tools to manage these risks, but we need new authorities to address these issues in a holistic manner. This is why it is so important that we have a public conversation about these risks.
This report represents months of work and introduces a number of recommendations for how state and federal agencies can strengthen the housing finance system and address these persisting challenges.
We look forward to our continued work with the Council on these pressing matters and stand ready to provide technical assistance on any related legislative approaches. I am confident that, working across the public sector, we can drive meaningful change in a way that supports sustainable access to credit while protecting the financial system and consumers from harm.

10/24/2022

Remarks by President Alanna McCargo at the 2022 MBA Annual Conference

President McCargo MBA Annual 2022 Conference Speech

Thank you for that warm introduction and good morning, everyone.

It is a great time to be together with all of you.

Since my arrival in Nashville yesterday, I have had a chance to meet with MBA’s Warehouse Lender Council and other key stakeholders, and I look forward to meeting with the Lender Roundtable later today.

This conference is always a great opportunity to meet and connect with a variety of stakeholders and counterparties and discuss the current market landscape, and it’s especially timely this year.

It is a pleasure to share this stage with two phenomenal women in housing finance—FHA Commissioner Gordon and FHFA Director Thompson. I am grateful for our collaboration and partnership. We share a common mission to engage with our industry partners so that we can increase access to credit and improve outcomes for households and communities that rely on our respective agencies for access to affordable homeownership and rental housing.

I have the honor and privilege of being the President of one of the largest and most impactful social enterprises in the world at Ginnie Mae. I take pride in the unique and serious role we have as a government corporation that supports and sustains the financing of affordable housing for millions of Americans. No other entity is quite like Ginnie Mae inside federal government.

We exist to provide a full faith and credit guaranty by the U.S. Government on mortgage-backed securities that are collateralized by loans insured by FHA, Rural Development, Veterans Affairs, and Public and Indian Housing mortgage loan guarantee programs. Our government guaranty attracts capital from around the world toward investment in the U.S. housing market. We are a force multiplier for our insuring and guaranteeing agency partners. Government mortgage insurance gives lenders confidence that they can lend in the communities we are here to serve, and our guaranty gives them the ability to lend at greater scale. We play an important countercyclical role and support the housing market in good times and through stressful periods.

Ginnie Mae has a dual mandate. We not only promote broad and affordable access to credit through our programs, but we support the stability of the secondary market. Our business model is designed such that Ginnie Mae does not take on direct credit risk. An important component of our model is the MBS issuer network and our reliance on their success, strength, and resilience. Today Ginnie Mae has over 360 active single family and multifamily issuers.

As I stand here, Ginnie Mae is in the midst of a massive transformation that will make our business more nimble. We are migrating our state of the art securitization platform to a fully cloud-enabled environment. When our planned business outage ends tomorrow, we will be fully operational in the cloud. This milestone is foundational to the many technological and digital innovations for the future and improves the way we do business with issuers and service providers. This foundation is crucial for the future and to accomplishing our strategic goals. As one example, our digital collateral program is poised for growth and has reached nearly $15 billion in eNotes in the evault in less than 2 years. The program has seen tremendous growth each month. The cloud infrastructure will continue to enable Ginnie Mae innovation as the technologies that support our business evolve.

One of the most important aspects of my job is to ensure we manage risks to the government mortgage programs and that we maintain a stable and equitable housing finance market. The Biden Administration and Secretary Fudge asked me to take on this incredible responsibility to serve America’s housing market and protect taxpayers. I do not take this lightly. I lead our terrific team of public servants at Ginnie Mae and take great care in the decisions we make for the future. I also pride myself and our team on transparency, actively listening, and proactive engagement with the use of evidence and data to guide us. In my two plus decades in housing finance, we’ve experienced historic highs and lows and I have seen this industry weather the most volatile market conditions. Looking back to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, we didn’t know how the markets or households would be impacted, but we worked together to expand liquidity with laser focus on keeping people in their homes and avoiding foreclosures.

Today, we face an unprecedented confluence of market trends. At Ginnie Mae, we understand how these headwinds are creating uncertainty for households and financial institutions alike. The Biden Administration has been focused on all aspects of fighting inflation, while managing what has been one of the strongest economic recoveries we have ever seen post-pandemic. Despite inflation, the country has witnessed continued low unemployment, wage growth, and relatively few foreclosures. As the Federal Reserve continues to address inflation pressures to bring prices down in many sectors, we are feeling the effects in the housing market acutely. In just a few short months, mortgage interest rates have grown to the highest levels we have seen in more than 20 years. This rapid increase in mortgage interest rates has had a direct impact on home purchases and refinances, with some signs of unprecedented year-over-year home price growth finally slowing down in some markets.

As we look ahead and plan for how we each manage through this uncertainty, it's important we reflect on the lessons from our pandemic experience.

When the pandemic first hit, Ginnie Mae instituted the Pass Through Assistance Program, known as PTAP. PTAP was an emergency pandemic program that provided issuers with liquidity assistance for principal and interest advances. Ginnie Mae provided stability at a time when it was greatly needed. Although PTAP was not heavily used thanks to a refinance boom and a record low interest rate environment, Ginnie Mae’s rapid implementation bolstered confidence during a period of unique stress.

Ginnie Mae worked alongside public and private sector partners including the issuer and servicer community to ensure we could manage the pandemic’s impact on the secondary market. We successfully adapted to the moment and introduced new MBS pool types including the Extended Term (ET) for 40 year modifications and Reperforming Ginnie Mae pools (RG).

The pandemic experience showed us all that policymakers and industry can overcome any challenge when we work together. This point is particularly true in government lending. Although Ginnie Mae’s purpose and role are unique, we can only accomplish our mission by working with our agency partners, issuers, and our global investor base.

It is this interdependency that informs our agency priorities and how we manage risk. We are focused on providing clarity to investors and providing liquidity in the secondary mortgage market.

Ginnie Mae’s issuer eligibility requirements are another important risk management tool that helps promote issuer liquidity. These requirements set standards for issuers to meet threshold levels of capital and liquidity to support their business.

The critical role that IMBs play in the government mortgage market cannot be overstated. The makeup of Ginnie Mae’s issuer base is a vastly different profile than we had in 2008. Before the great financial crisis, the overwhelming majority of our issuance came from depositories. The crisis brought great changes to our industry, and with it, a complete shift in our issuer base. Independent mortgage banks now issue more than 90 percent of Ginnie Mae securities each month. IMBs have been an integral part of government lending for more than a decade. The Ginnie Mae program, however, is liquidity intensive. When liquidity needs intensify, independent mortgage bank financing also faces greater strain. Ginnie Mae knows that it is critically important for IMBs to be able to access financing across cycles, because IMBs are on the frontlines every day, making sure new households can achieve homeownership on the lending side and helping struggling borrowers remain in their homes through their servicing role.

The standards we announced in August will enhance market confidence in our issuers across cycles. Because Ginnie Mae is unique, we introduced a Risk Based Capital requirement in our eligibility rules. This requirement was based on evidence from risk analysis and a robust issuer stress testing program and is a prudent step and standard, especially given IMBs growth and integral role in the government mortgage market. The IMB space has not had this type of requirement in the past, and we believe it’s a new and crucial step that will promote long-term stability, given how important MSRs are to IMB balance sheets. Let me be clear: The risk-based capital requirement is about the future. It’s about the long term stability and viability of the government mortgage market.

Although a few observers have raised concerns about our approach to assess IMBs under the risk-based capital framework, Ginnie Mae has received balanced feedback from regulators, lenders, and issuers alike. This framework is a long overdue step to bring us current with the realities of how and who support the mortgage market today.

I know our requirements, particularly the RBC element, has started an important conversation at a really critical time, and it’s been a very healthy conversation for government lending and the system overall. Ginnie Mae intends to continue leading this conversation for the benefit of taxpayers, borrowers, and market participants.

We have been actively engaged with our issuers and stakeholders about the new standards and what they mean for their business models and what the path toward implementation looks like. During the course of this engagement, one thing has become increasingly clear—more time is needed to ensure that we can implement the new standards methodically and for the long term.

This is why last Friday, we announced the 1-year implementation extension for the Risk Based Capital Requirement to December 31, 2024. It is important to note that the implementation extension is for the Risk Based Capital requirement only. All the other liquidity and net worth requirements remain unchanged from the original announcement. More details can be found on ginniemae.gov.

Our updated standards will strengthen the sustainability of the MBS ecosystem, promote durable access to credit for the underserved, and protect borrowers from volatility in the mortgage markets over the long term.

Let me turn to some other critical items our issuers are facing as I prepare to close.

As I said earlier, Ginnie Mae is always looking at ways to enhance liquidity through our current programs.

To preserve the value proposition of Ginnie Mae MBS during an environment of unprecedented market support by the Federal Reserve MBS purchase program through the pandemic, we instituted the Reperforming Ginnie Mae pools, or RG. RG pools allowed issuers to place reperforming loans into custom pools, as long as they met certain requirements, supporting their ability to perform loss mitigation and preserving the investment value proposition of our TBA securities.

During the past several months, we have engaged with a variety of stakeholders regarding our RG Pool program. We have received many questions about the future of the RG program and feedback on the complexities associated with these pools, especially in this rising rate environment. The early buyout activity during the pandemic has largely subsided given the higher interest rate environment and the transition in delinquencies. So, I urged my team to think hard about how we can give the market clarity on the future of this pandemic-era program.

I’m pleased to announce that by the end of the first quarter of 2023, Ginnie Mae will be changing our policy and requirements for these reperforming loan pools, making RG pooling optional.

In the first quarter of next year, we will shorten the seasoning requirement from 6 months to 3 months and allow issuers the option to re-pool into our Ginnie Mae II Single-Family TBA Multi-Issuer pools. A press release just went out about the planned RG program changes, and we will be releasing more details in an All Participants Memo (APM) soon.

If you take one thing away from my remarks today, let it be this: The past several years have made clear that we can overcome any challenge when we work collaboratively and in good faith. We are going to work through this cycle together, and I am committed to working together with all of you to strengthen our industry so we can endure and continue to support the many households that face the biggest affordable housing challenges of our time.

The Biden Administration, Ginnie Mae, and our government partners are here to support stability in the mortgage and housing market, tackle the tough issues, and work with you to make sure that all Americans can access and maintain their stake in affordable, safe housing.

I look forward to your questions.

4/26/2022

Remarks Prepared for Delivery by Ginnie Mae President Alanna McCargo

At FHFA and Ginnie Mae Listening Session Regarding Minimum Financial Eligibility

Requirements for Single-Family MBS Issuers

April 25, 2022

Good afternoon. It is my pleasure to co-host this listening event with my friend and colleague Acting Director Sandra Thompson. The housing finance world has undergone a remarkable evolution since the global financial crisis of 2008, including in the composition of who performs the all-important mortgage lending and servicing functions. Ginnie Mae and FHFA, as well as the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, have invested a great deal of time and effort contemplating these necessary changes within government, and today’s session is another example of this — ensuring key stakeholder concerns are heard and discussed. I really appreciate everyone who has joined today and those who will speak to their concerns and the impacts of policy in this space.

Our current issuer eligibility requirements are a useful tool in promoting successful participation in Ginnie Mae’s mortgage-backed securities (MBS) program. Today, with the knowledge gained through our ongoing monitoring of our issuers, our own liquidity risk mitigation efforts in response to the pandemic, and other modeling and analysis, we have determined that Ginnie Mae’s issuer eligibility requirements must be enhanced, not only to protect the program and create resiliency during adverse market conditions, but also, to ensure the stability of the Ginnie Mae MBS marketplace for generations to come.

As the team undertook this initiative, several core principles were embraced:

First, enhance the level of confidence so that issuers are positioned to be successful through multiple economic cycles. Ginnie Mae wants issuers to succeed through volatile cycles because they are integral to the housing capital markets and provide consistent and essential access to credit for homeowners and renters — the beneficiaries of our insuring and guarantying agencies’ programs. This is particularly important given the increased dependence of today’s industry on external financing.
Second, ensuring that the enhanced requirements’ immediate impact on the existing issuer base is manageable. Just as it would be wrong to ignore the need for change, so it would be wrong to introduce destabilizing change.
Third, to the greatest extent possible, harmonize with the requirements proposed by FHFA. Such alignment simplifies issuers’ capital and liquidity planning as well as makes compliance easier to measure, report, and govern. We must also acknowledge, however, that the risks inherent to the government mortgage sector are quite different and that cannot be ignored, meaning it is possible that we may, in some places, diverge from selected tenets ultimately implemented for the enterprises.

We believe we have achieved these three key objectives. Our proposed new eligibility requirements that will ultimately be released will achieve three other important goals:

Assess the total risk profile of an issuer, rather than only looking at the risk related to Ginnie Mae MBS exposure;
Account for capital and liquidity impacted by interest rate risk and origination activities; and
Differentiate the relative risk issuers take, such as leverage and interest rate and credit sensitive assets like MSRs and Non-QM.

This is naturally a subject of which issuers will have strong opinions, and we appreciate their input. Some brief comments on the risk-based capital portion of our proposed requirements:

As many pointed out, there are fundamental differences between the business model of a bank and a non-bank, as liquidity is the primary risk for the latter. That doesn’t change the fact that the protection afforded by different asset classes can vary considerably, and we continue to believe that this difference should be recognized in our eligibility standards and risk management. Further, as some have pointed out, stronger capital standards are generally a credit positive for institutions, which is favorable for bank-supplied lending and ultimately, we believe, for MSR value.
There have been concerns that these requirements would negatively affect smaller issuers or impede lending to low- to moderate-income or minority borrowers. In fact, our analysis shows that smaller issuers, on the whole, are closer to full compliance with our proposed requirements. And nothing about the requirements is punitive for loans to the borrowers that are the subject of this expressed concern.
There is a view that the government’s focus should be on broad emergency liquidity facilities rather than on enhanced financial standards at the individual institution level. Whether that makes sense is indeed an important and interesting public policy question, but it is not a viable rationale for otherwise maintaining the same standards when the institutional risk profile of the industry has changed dramatically while the Ginnie Mae guaranty fee has remained exactly the same through these changes. We will continue to evaluate the merits of such a facility alongside our counterpart agencies.

Nevertheless, there are some areas where the feedback on our proposal was compelling and will have an influence as we work to adjust our proposal. We deeply appreciate all those who took the time to provide thoughtful submissions in response to the Ginnie Mae request for input last year and we have taken time to carefully review and fully analyze various scenarios as well as the larger context in which we are working alongside FHFA. This effort has taken time, but it was really important, and Secretary Fudge and I want to be sure all the considerations and priorities are appropriately considered and that our fundamental commitment to the Administration’s goal of ensuring equity in our housing finance system is reflected in our policy.

Through our ongoing dialogue with industry stakeholders, including our work with FHFA, I am confident that Ginnie Mae will arrive at final enhancements that encourage issuers to engage in higher levels of capital and liquidity planning and governance and consider all lines of an issuer’s business model, contemplating both origination and servicing activities and risks. As we work towards finalizing our eligibility requirements, we will continue to study event-driven risks and refine our issuer stress testing analytical framework.

My remarks this afternoon would be incomplete without placing emphasis on the critical mission of Ginnie Mae. Since its inception in 1968, Ginnie Mae has made affordable housing a reality for millions of Americans by ensuring liquidity and stability to the government insured programs that serve some of the most underserved populations in our country as well as critical segments of consumers including seniors, veterans, and tribes — and doing so while protecting taxpayers. Ginnie Mae is the only federal agency tasked with the administration and oversight of an explicit full-faith and credit guaranty on MBS. For our insuring and guarantying agency partners — including FHA, the VA, USDA’s Rural Housing Service and HUD’s Public and Indian Housing — we are the only game in town.

Our legacy is that, even in difficult times, an investment in Ginnie Mae MBS has proven to be one of the safest an investor can make, as evidenced by the global investor demand for these securities. Our stewardship of this legacy, and responsibility to all our stakeholders, is always at the forefront of our decisioning and risk management approach and has been front and center for me since I became President of Ginnie Mae in December.

With that in mind, I am grateful for this opportunity to listen to feedback from our stakeholders and to work closely with our sister agency, FHFA, to advance this important work.

Thank you.

7/24/2018

Prepared Remarks by EVP & COO Michael R. Bright at Senate Confirmation Hearing

Statement by Michael R. Bright

Nominee for President, Government National Mortgage Association
Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
United States Senate
July 24, 2018

Chairman Crapo, Ranking Member Brown, and distinguished members of this committee, thank you for inviting me here today. It is an honor to appear before you as the nominee to be the President of the Government National Mortgage Association, or Ginnie Mae.

Let me take a moment to quickly thank my family who is here. I’m joined by my wife, Maggie, and my son, Mac. My daughter Margaux, who is 5, is at her grandparent’s house in Florida, probably watching on the computer. All 3 of them have been incredibly supportive of me since coming to Washington, and that comes despite the many nights of coming home tired, grumpy, and distracted with work. I know that I ask a lot of them, and I am always thankful for their love and support.

In addition to being a father, for the past twelve months it has been my honor to serve as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Ginnie Mae. I’d like to tell you a little about what I have learned, and what I think still needs to be done.

Ginnie Mae was created in 1968 when Congress spun off Fannie Mae as a government-sponsored private company and retained Ginnie as a complimentary government corporation given the task of facilitating the securitization of certain mortgages with an explicit, transparent, and paid for government guarantee. Ginnie Mae has since evolved into a $2 trillion government security with a focus on facilitating lending to low and moderate income, rural, urban, and veteran borrowers.

Today, Ginnie Mae’s bond and Ginnie Mae’s brand are globally recognized as the most pristine mortgage security in the world. This is because of Ginnie Mae’s track record of success and our robust process for ensuring the timely payment of principal and interest to security holders. Ginnie Mae has never missed a payment in its 50 years of existence, even during the financial crisis. That is exactly what an explicit government guarantee is meant to provide and delivering on that mission is what we do every single day.

The day job of managing the roughly 150 employees of Ginnie Mae has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me over the past year. Ginnie has some of the most dedicated, knowledgeable, and mission-focused professionals I have ever worked with. They are squarely focused on the challenges of dealing with both Ginnie’s growth and the evolving nature of the U.S. mortgage market.

To address these challenges, over the past twelve months we have launched a modernization campaign called “Ginnie Mae 2020,” a three-year strategic plan that will have our data centers running on cutting edge technology, realign our counterparty risk management framework, help bring in additional financing for mortgage servicing rights, and expand our global investor base through outreach and education in dozens of countries around the globe. All these efforts are well under way, some are even nearing completion, and we are very excited about the promise they hold for the future of our organization.

One issue I have worked with many of you on this past year is that of so-called “VA loan churning,” or the rapid refinancing of VA loans with little or no benefit to the borrower, as well as the making of VA loans at interest rates higher than a veteran should be getting. I want to specifically thank Senators Tillis and Warren for their leadership on this issue. Between the work we have done administratively at Ginnie as well as the language recently passed into law, we have taken a major step towards rooting out behavior that was threatening the very viability of the Ginnie security, and thereby threatening the viability of the VA, USDA, and FHA programs we support. We will not tolerate this behavior, and we now know that Congress stands with us. Collectively, our efforts are working. We can already see that in the form of a better security price, which directly translates into lower rates for FHA, VA, and USDA borrowers.

I didn’t begin my career in Washington. I came here after working in my twenties on mortgage trading desks in Los Angeles and Charlotte, including through the financial crisis. During that time, I learned thousands of lessons that I place into two thematic buckets: First, I learned that the mortgage market is incredibly technical and enormously complex. I feel honored to be able to use the technical knowledge I gained to serve a broader public policy mission that benefits all Americans. Second, I learned that greed and unbridled ambition can be dangerous realities, and if left unchecked in the housing market, the consequences can be disastrous. I came to Washington in large part to help ensure we never repeat the 2008 financial crisis, and I wake up every day with that mindset still.

I also want to say thank you to the members and staff that I have been privileged to work with in the past, most especially Senator Corker. Working with Senator Corker, Senator Warner, Senator Crapo, and other members of this committee as a staffer was a tremendous honor and an experience I still think about every single day.

Going forward, my main goals for Ginnie Mae are to ensure that the agency is well run, and that the agency can continue to serve its statutory obligations to help ensure a stable U.S. housing market. There is much to be done, and I look forward to the task.

Thank you.

9/21/2015

Remarks by President Ted Tozer from the Ginnie Mae Summit

Ginnie Mae Summit
Arlington, Virginia
September 21, 2015

Welcome to Ginnie Mae’s 2015 Summit!

It’s great to see so many people here at our third Summit. This event has grown each year -- both in importance to the industry and in the number of attendees. This year we have about 700 people – our largest crowd ever.

And it’s truly international group. We have representatives here this morning from the British Embassy as well as the Chinese and Japanese governments. To them I say: o’hayou and nǐhǎo. So thank you for being here. Thank you for being our partner.

We have a great program in store for you – from workshops covering everything going on at Ginnie Mae – to the big issues facing our industry. We look forward to your feedback. Everyone here today, particularly if you are a Ginnie Mae Issuer -- has been a part of the biggest transformation in the history of mortgage finance.

The theme of the conference this year is “game changers.”

Ginnie Mae was actually created based on the idea that the environment would stay static — that the game would NOT change.

Our infrastructure, including our small staff, was based on the premise that the MBS program would never change. All we really needed to do was keep the assembly line running. But TODAY, almost nothing we do would work on an assembly line.

You have probably heard me talk about the massive shift in our issuer base --to independent mortgage bankers. New business models for managing mortgage servicing rights. Layer upon layer of confusing and conflicting regulations. And a more prominent FHA and VA.

These things and more have changed the game for all of us.

We work every day because we know that having a home is the ultimate game changer in the lives of the American people.

So again, thank you for being our partner.

This morning I want to look ahead, and talk about how we are meeting the challenges I just referenced.

But first, let’s take a minute to look back -- at what we have accomplished together in the past five years.

In fiscal year 2015 alone, there are over 4.9 million families, most of modest financial means, that have directly benefitted from a Ginnie Mae guaranteed securitization. That’s because of you!
Experienced NO interruption in getting a mortgage. And that’s because of you!
Ginnie Mae took a chance when we embraced and supported independent mortgage bankers in our program. This decision turned out to be the right one – certainly in keeping credit access flowing. In the last 4 years, over 5.4 million borrowers have benefitted because Ginnie Mae welcomed independent mortgage bankers. If we had acted differently, either these people would have had to pay more for their mortgage or they would have been locked out of the market completely. Because of you, these families have an affordable mortgage and a place to call home!
Also during the last four years, Ginnie Mae issuers pumped an additional $602 billion into U.S. housing - - while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s presence was minimal at best. That’s because of you!
And, if you look at the monthly volumes reported from the GSE’s and Ginnie Mae in the last two months ... you’ll see we have surged to the top of the industry. And that’s because of you – and you – and you!

These are impressive achievements. Together we made a difference!

So, things are going well. Mark Zandi will tell you later today that we are in the “SWEET SPOT” What could possibly go wrong? Well, now it is the time in my speech when I introduce the word “BUT.” Are you ready?

Yes, we’ve had great success - - BUT if Ginnie Mae’s resource challenges are not addressed, we have to slow down that assembly line.

Here’s why. Five years ago, Ginnie Mae was like the little engine that could, churning along with a business model designed for issuers that were mostly large or regional banks. They had strong and simple balance sheets, financial structures that were relatively simple, yet even in that environment, Ginnie Mae could barely keep up with just 60 employees. Our engine was huffing and puffing and it was definitely struggling.

Many of you know what has happened since then. Our issuer base has doubled. Today almost two thirds of Ginnie Mae guaranteed securities are issued by independent mortgage banks. And independent mortgage bankers are using some of the most sophisticated financial engineering that this industry has ever seen.

We are also seeing greater dependence on credit lines, securitization involving multiple players, and more frequent trading of servicing rights -- all these things have created a new and challenging environment for Ginnie Mae.

Frankly, as we look forward to the future, I do not believe that we have a large enough engine to deal with the steep hill in front of us.

In other words, the risk is a lot higher and business models of our issuers are a lot more complex. Add in sharply higher annual volumes, and these risks are amplified many times over.

To confront this level of enhanced risk, we simply must become a different organization. Right now, we are doing the best we can with what we have – but the challenges keep growing.

Our budget, which stands at $23 million for salaries and expenses, simply does not allow us to make the changes needed to keep pace with the transformation that has occurred in the industry. We are managing a $1.6 trillion portfolio of outstanding guarantees. On a monthly basis, we are doing more business than either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

Yet we are operating with infrastructure and platforms that sometimes remind me of the military’s use of pontoon bridges – temporary structures that are cobbled together to deal with unexpected obstacles or challenges.

Also, we have depended on sheer luck. Luck that the economy does not fall into recession and increase mortgage delinquencies. Luck that our independent mortgage bankers remain able to access their lines of credit. And luck that nothing critical falls through the cracks.

If you think about the impact that Ginnie Mae has -- in the mortgage finance industry, and on the economy at large, it is too important to leave any part of it to luck. Instead, we need to face up to the challenges presented by the new environment.

Fortunately, we’ve got a plan to do just that.

One that builds out a process to monitor issuers, with sophisticated financial oversight capacities similar to those of the FDIC.
One that will give us the needed resources to recruit and retain talented staff.
One that will create a new operating infrastructure and platforms that replace all of those pontoon bridges, with permanent steel reinforcements – strong enough to manage over 430 issuers no matter how complex their business model.
One that creates a risk-management system that supports millions of families who depend on government mortgages. Our vision for the future represents a new standard for Ginnie Mae and for housing finance in America.

A security that preserves our guarantee, which makes the 30-year mortgage possible, BUT puts the government in the most remote position of risk. A common security that creates what some have called the ultimate level playing field. And one that attracts broad and diverse mortgage investors, both here and abroad. An operating securitization platform that is flexible and durable enough to handle fluctuations in the mortgage market, but provides standard data to investors that they can trust. And a business model where private capital gets the most reward, but also bears most of the risk.

That’s our vision for the future -- a future we will have together. It can create game changers in the lives of the people we serve.

However, whether we have the resources to implement this vision is not entirely up to us. The reality is that we depend on Congress to support the increased funding required to implement this vision.

Currently, our budget request of just $5 million additional dollars, has been denied by Congress. This is in spite of the fact that we don’t use a dime of taxpayer money. In fact, last year we made $1.5 billion in profit, and on average have generated an annual profit of more than $900 million for the U.S. Treasury over the past five years.

We realize that the industry is currently grappling with an uncertain regulatory environment that is challenging to say the least. We don’t want to create additional obstacles, but Ginnie Mae has to do SOMETHING.

So in the coming weeks and months we will make announcements about the steps that we will be taking until our staffing situation improves. But even so, I am still focused on a favorable outcome. Together I believe we can continue to make a difference.

The alternative would be to remove the opportunity for affordable mortgage finance from millions of people because Ginnie Mae has to back away from the market.

For almost 50 years, Ginnie Mae has served the mortgage markets well. We have introduced historic innovations, such as the mortgage-backed security. We have weathered many a storm as business cycles come and go, including the Great Recession, perhaps the biggest threat to the mortgage finance industry since the Great Depression. Together we made sure that, even during the worst times, qualified borrowers could still get a mortgage.

In fact, I sometimes wonder if the interruption was so minor that it obscured the challenges that I have talked about today - -We might have made it look too easy.

Through it all Ginnie Mae has persevered. And what has remained steady through all of this change and upheaval is that we’ve always met our two primary responsibilities:

1) maintaining our common securitization platform; and,

2) protecting the government guarantee.

Today, I believe we are at a crossroads in the history of housing finance in America.

The decisions made by Congress, policy makers and many of us in this room will have consequences for millions of people – homeowners, renters, and people in assisted living. For veterans who depend upon what we do in order to access a benefit that they have earned by defending our country. Because ultimately we are deciding whether our programs will serve the many – or just a select few.

To me, making sure that people have access to affordable mortgage credit, well, that is the ultimate game changer.

Thank you again for coming, and I hope that you enjoy the rest of the Summit.

-End-

7/8/2015

Remarks by President Tozer from the Global Chinese Real Estate Congress Address

Global Chinese Real Estate Congress Address
The Fairmont Hotel // 2401 M St NW, Washington, DC

Thank you for the generous introduction. It’s great to see many friends again. Three years ago, I spoke at your conference in Macau – thank you professor Rose Lai for inviting me there – and, of course, I want to thank Doctors Jian Chen and Tyler Yang for inviting me to address you today.

On behalf of Ginnie Mae – welcome to Washington D.C. , our nation’s capital. Thank you for honoring us with your presence and your continued interest in our mortgage finance system and our secondary market.

The Global Chinese Real Estate Congress is such a diverse and distinguished group. It is a premier platform for scholars, private developers and government officials to share current issues and future challenges.

It is my pleasure to follow my friend and colleague Dr. Ed Golding this morning. Dr. Golding and I each represent important agencies for advancing housing in the United States and we share many priorities and concerns.

A vibrant and innovative housing finance system is the cornerstone of economic prosperity in the United States … and it can be for Asia, as well.

I believe that our nations share a common interest in looking for ways to ensure safe and quality housing for all of our people.

“The American Dream” of home ownership is an aspiration for all Americans whether they live in our cities, towns or farms. This dream crosses borders and continents . . . economic structures and political ideologies.

Today, I want to discuss some of the history of U.S. government involvement in housing, the creation of a secondary market, and the TBA – “To Be Announced” market, which was started to facilitate the trading of Ginnie Mae MBS, and is critical to the success of the American housing finance system and the 30-year mortgage.

I will talk about Ginnie Mae’s two primary roles – running a single security platform and protecting the explicit government guarantee that is crucial to the existence of the 30-year mortgage market. We will also examine how market factors like our changing issuer base are affecting how we do business.

An important point to remember is that the Ginnie Mae model levels the playing field for all our issuers, because all use the same security. As the types of issuers using the model have changed and the volume of securities trading has more than doubled -- we are revising our risk management procedures and modernizing the single security platform technology. And we’ll talk more about that a little later......

First – let’s take a look at some of the events that have shaped the American housing finance system. History has shown that home ownership builds wealth over time, promotes stable communities, improves schools and encourages civic involvement.

Those are among the most important reasons the United States government has a prominent role in promoting an affordable and stable housing finance system that can weather economic and financial storms.

It wasn’t always the case that our housing markets could survive severe economic downturns. Once, the U.S. relied totally on the banking sector for mortgage finance … but that proved disastrous. Today, the key to our success in building the world’s strongest and most innovative housing finance program is a countercyclical system that relies on a public-private partnership with industry and government working together to help smooth out the booms and busts of housing cycles. A vibrant secondary market is essential to this system.

As important as government involvement is to the mortgage finance system, government should never crowd out or create unfair competition with the private capital upon which the entire system ultimately depends.

Let me begin by taking you back nearly 100 years, to a time just after the end of the first World War.

Back then homes were financed primarily by banks that specialized in mortgage lending, called Savings & Loans, which used deposits to fund balloon loans with maturities from three to five years. Loans were generally capped at loan to value of 50 percent.

In prosperous times, the requirement to refinance or repay mortgage debt within five years was simple to meet. Cities were growing . . . home prices were rising . . . and jobs were plentiful. The stock market crash on October 29, 1929, changed everything, triggering “The Great Depression.”

Overnight, jobs vanished. Borrowers couldn’t repay loans. Home prices depreciated by half. Depositors made runs on banks.

Without sufficient deposits, balloon mortgages couldn’t be refinanced … even if the home owner still had a job. The banking system became insolvent. Millions of Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. /p>

The Great Depression led to the election of President Franklin Roosevelt. Soon after taking office, his administration created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to liquidate nonperforming loans in bank portfolios, and to bail out lending institutions that were insolvent.

But the most dramatic intervention came with the passage of the 1934 National Housing Act. It created the Federal Housing Administration, or FHA, to provide insurance against mortgage defaults for lenders. FHA’s program successfully integrated the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage with low down payments to home buyers.

Later, Congress chartered Fannie Mae as a government-owned agency to become an investor for FHA-insured loans. In reality, Fannie Mae basically acted as a large portfolio manager.

As the economic cycle again shifted from bust to boom following the end of World War II, the housing-finance system stabilized and the private sector again took precedence in investing in mortgages. Interest rates were low, Savings & Loans were again growing, and commercial banks increased their presence in the mortgage market. Meanwhile, demand for government-insured loans dwindled.

The federal government privatized Fannie Mae in 1968 – both to reduce the need for the government to purchase mortgages and to spur private investment in the asset. The newly private firm was allowed to purchase loans not insured by the government – so-called “conventional loans.”

The role of creating a program to securitize mortgage loans was assumed by my agency, the Government National Mortgage Association – more commonly known as Ginnie Mae.

Ginnie Mae is not a GSE – as are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It is a wholly owned government corporation. At the heart of our success, as well as the success of the entire secondary market, is the mortgage-backed security, or MBS which our issuers use to issue bonds on our single security platform that many say is the ultimate level playing field because it treats all issuers the same.

In 1970, it was Ginnie Mae who guaranteed the issuance of the world’s first MBS, which allowed many loans to be pooled and used as collateral in a security that could be sold in the secondary market. With the full faith and credit of the United States behind it, Ginnie Mae guarantees the timely payment of principal and interest to security investors of MBS which are issued on our single security platform and collateralized by loans insured by FHA, VA and the Rural Housing Service.

It was the creation of a standardized MBS that revolutionized mortgage finance in America. It broadened the investor base while separating credit risk from interest-rate risk. Moreover, MBS came of age at an opportune time as economic conditions deteriorated once more in the 1970s.

Over the next two decades, the housing finance system faced twin threats of rising inflation and climbing interest rates – threats set in motion by higher government deficits and oil shocks that sent energy costs soaring.

Higher interest rates severely punished Savings & Loans and Fannie Mae because they relied on short-term deposits to fund their long-term, fixed-rate mortgages. Suddenly, banks were paying higher interest rates to attract deposits than they were earning on their existing portfolio of mortgages. Thousands of Savings and Loans became insolvent and had to close. In 1980, Fannie Mae was losing a million dollars a day from mismatched duration of assets and liabilities.

It was a seminal moment in the history of U.S. housing finance.

If not for the utilization of MBS to raise funds for mortgages from the world’s capital markets, the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage would have died along with the Savings & Loan industry. But the creation of a standardized MBS and, in particular, MBS guaranteed by Ginnie Mae, enabled the housing industry to recover from the loss of so many bank investors and preserved access to long-term, fixed-rate mortgages. Fannie Mae issued its first MBS 10 years after Ginnie Mae – to sell its mismatched mortgage portfolio into the capital markets.

The creation of the MBS market transformed the U.S. housing finance system.

For instance, since its peak years in the early 1970s, commercial banks and savings institutions now play only a limited role in owning mortgages. Today, more than 60 percent of mortgage debt outstanding in the U.S. is securitized in mortgage-backed bonds.

The key to this successful transition is the so-called TBA market, made possible by the standardized and common MBS, mentioned earlier. The TBA market is so crucial to the entire mortgage finance system in this country, that the fear of disrupting this market has proved a barrier to housing finance reform – because anything that disrupts trading – even for a short time could disrupt the entire marketplace.

Without the TBA market, lenders would not be able to lock in loan applications prior to actually originating loans and borrowers could not lock in interest rates.

To give you an idea of how the TBA market creates liquidity for mortgage-backed securities, consider these numbers:

As of the 3rd quarter of 2013, the total amount of MBS guaranteed by Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac totaled $5.3 trillion. That’s a little less than the $7.7 trillion in corporate bonds and a bit more than the $3.6 trillion of municipal bonds outstanding at the same time.

But the magic of TBA enabled the daily trading volume of MBS to far surpass either of those other securities. Agency MBS averaged $178 billion in daily trading, while corporate bonds were $20 billion and munis just $10 billion. That extraordinary liquidity makes Agency MBS second only to US Treasuries in attractiveness to investors and keeps prices low for home borrowers.

Ginnie Mae’s flexible model and single securitization platform has proven its ability to respond in both up and down markets. This was never so evident than during 2006 through 2012.

Housing prices peaked in early 2006, and then began a steady decline, reaching new lows in 2012. On December 30, 2008, the Case-Shiller home price index reported its largest price drop in its history. The credit crisis resulting from the bursting of the housing bubble is—according to general consensus—the primary cause of the Great Recession – another turning point in the United States housing finance system.

During this time investors in US and around the world sought quality and safety in instruments such as Ginnie Mae securities. The beneficiaries of this flight to quality were American homeowners who experienced the lowest mortgage rates in history.

For the last several years the market has been steadily recovering, and the demand for MBS issued off the Ginnie Mae platform remains solid.

In some ways this is due to the emergence of new entities that occupy the space once dominated by traditional banks. These new entities show no sign of retreating from the marketplace. Traditional banks have continued to exit the mortgage origination and servicing space, due in some part to the proliferation of regulations that emerged after the crisis. Because they are not depository institutions, the new institutions are not subject to banking supervision.

The transition of the market is evidenced in the growth in outstanding Ginnie Mae guaranteed MBS.

It took 40 years for the amount of mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Ginnie Mae to reach $1 trillion in 2010. Just four years later, the total had grown to $1.5 trillion.

Our ability to attract domestic and global capital is essential to our ability to facilitate affordable housing finance options for those seeking home ownership, affordable rental housing, assisted living, and senior citizens seeking to remain in their homes. We estimate that about 40 percent of investors in Ginnie Mae MBS are offshore.

As we’ve noted here, Ginnie Mae has proven its value in the marketplace. Our model is flexible and generic. It allows the new entrants to flourish in a market that was not working.

However, the growth is not without cost, and that cost is largely in the growing complexity of monitoring the issuers of Ginnie Mae securities. As we noted earlier, one of Ginnie Mae’s primary roles is to make sure that the issuers of Ginnie Mae securities can make their “pass through” payments to investors.

In the past, when a majority of Ginnie Mae MBS were issued by depository institutions such as Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America, the job of monitoring our issuers was much easier, and much of it was done by regulators. In the last two years depositories have been replaced by non-depository institutions not overseen by federal prudential regulators such as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency or the FDIC. Companies such as Quicken, PennyMac and Freedom Mortgage are the new powerhouses in home lending and securitization.

While the addition of these firms has enhanced competition, broadened the availability of credit and reduced concentration risk for Ginnie Mae it also stresses our capacity to monitor and mitigate risk of these new entrants.

As we noted, the new entrants are very different than banks, and the risks they pose are different. While we welcome these new entrants, because we know that they are providing much needed capital which translates into credit availability – we have a larger and more complex job than we once did. Like most federal agencies, Ginnie Mae must ask Congress for appropriated funds to hire full time staff. Limiting our ability to increase staff to cover the new responsibilities I’ve outlined.

Without additional staff, we will need to take steps to significantly mitigate our risk which could include limiting new Issuers or boosting our capital and liquidity standards in order to protect American taxpayers.

However, no matter which steps we choose to mitigate risk, the end result is likely to be constriction of credit for borrowers. In turn, that may have severe ramifications for the U.S. – and the world – since the housing market is such an important engine for our economy. In addition, it would reduce the investment options of global investors who turn to Ginnie Mae-backed securities for safety and yield.

I believe it can all be avoided if Congress just allocates the necessary funds for Ginnie Mae staff needs.

I know that my concerns are shared by industry groups and consumer advocates throughout the U.S. who have joined me in appealing for additional staff resources.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this morning. We share similar goals of creating vibrant and affordable housing markets for our economies and we can learn much from one another from these types of dialogues. Have a great conference and I look forward to visiting with you again.

5/26/2015

Remarks by President Tozer from the MBA National Secondary Market Conference

The Tipping Point:
New Issuer Complexity Requires Determined Oversight

Remarks by Ted Tozer, President of Ginnie Mae
MBA National Secondary Market Conference
New York City
May 19, 2015

It’s great to be here today, and to be a part of this great industry – particularly at such a dynamic time in a market that is changing and innovating at a pace we’ve never experienced before.

If you think about how to describe the current environment, words like game changers . . . innovation . . . and disruption come to mind – and all in the most positive light. All terms that describe a climate where positive change . . . economic opportunity . . . and new ways of doing things often emerge as the result of new dynamics in a once predictable space.

Often, when change occurs, it happens incrementally over a period of time. And people notice only if it affects them personally. Then, there is a tipping point. Suddenly everyone notices the change – it’s the newest thing . . . and everybody starts talking about it.

That’s why I’m here today: To explore with you the striking changes we are all seeing in government-backed lending. Indeed, the tipping point has already occurred thanks to new players in mortgage finance Industry.

Our traditional Prominent Issuers – for instance, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase – have reduced their presence in mortgage lending and servicing and new entrants have come to play a more prominent role.

Let there be no misunderstanding about this trend: It is good news.

Ginnie Mae sees the development itself as being simply the appropriate functioning of the free market. We are heartened and grateful, in fact, to see the extent to which private capital sees opportunity in mortgage servicing rights – because it takes a lot of qualified capacity to service $1.5 trillion in MBS.

Not only that, but the new entrants are creating innovation in the marketplace that is welcome. Even more important for the market – they are creating more competition.

From where I sit, the more competition there is, the less chance there is of “too big to fail” situation occurring. This slide gives a few of the benefits these new players create:

they improve access to credit for home buyers,
they increase competition,
they enhance innovation,
they help spread risk throughout the capital markets; and
they provide more outlets for Ginnie Mae to transfer servicing in case of Issuer default

While market participants are changing, Ginnie Mae’s priorities remain the same. Our number one concern is still making sure the Issuers of our guaranteed MBS have the operational and financial strength to meet their debt obligations to bond holders.

We constantly assess the ability of our Issuers:

to make timely payments to investors;
to adequately service loans that are current or in default;

It also means ensuring our Issuers have sufficient capital, and most important of all, that our Issuers have enough liquidity to make advances to bond holders when loans become delinquent.

From our vantage point, that’s pretty similar to what regulators do.

That’s not well understood. Often, people lump Ginnie Mae in with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, thinking that what GSEs do in the secondary market for conventional loans, Ginnie Mae does for government loans.

Sure, the GSE and Ginnie Mae guarantee MBS. But we have different levels of protection before our capital is at risk including homeowner equity and credit enhancement purchased for the issuers benefit and in Ginnie Mae’s case 100 percent of the Issuers capital.

But that’s about where the similarities end.

Unlike the GSEs, Ginnie Mae is neither the security issuer nor the master servicer. It is our approved financial institutions – we call them “Issuers” because just like Fannie and Freddie, they issue MBS. GSEs function like Ginnie Mae Issuers. And it is our Issuers’ performance that we are guaranteeing to investors.

The difference is Ginnie Mae oversees the Financial and Operational soundness of our Issuers to protect the government guarantee. We perform that role similar to the way the FDIC oversees banks to protect its guarantee on deposits.

While the market has been changing over the last few years, it is only that in the last year we’ve all realized that we are in a new market environment.

Ginnie Mae has experienced significant growth in the number of our Issuers since I became President in 2010.

Without their entrance into the market, we could have experienced a 33 percent decline in credit availability because of reduced Issuance of Ginnie Mae Guaranteed MBS between 2010 and today. The engine behind this growth is the new entrants, as this next chart demonstrates.

Rather than declining, we’ve experienced remarkable growth in MBS guaranteed.

It took four decades for our outstanding GUARANTEES TO reach $1 Trillion. It took just four more years for it to reach $1.5 Trillion.

So I will say it again: having new Ginnie Mae issuers is good news; having more Issues is even better. And we want as many Issuers as possible that can be successful in our program.

What we are focused on, then, are the implications of the trend.

The primary implications arise from elements that are for the most part new, and have to do largely with the way the emerging institutions are financed.

They are structured, and they fund their operations, in ways that are more complex and not as well tested as more traditional approaches. These characteristics in turn could have an impact how these institutions perform under stress.

An example of this is our Acknowledgement Agreement, by which Ginnie Mae MSRs are allowed to be pledged as collateral in a financing. Acknowledgement agreements are designed to reduce Ginnie Mae’s risk while increasing liquidity for our Issuers. Their creation demonstrates our commitment to keeping these new entrants competitive. But if Ginnie Mae doesn’t have sufficient resources to manage the agreements, it could actually increase our risks.

Like the financial structure of many new entrants, Ginnie Mae’s risk assessment challenges are more complex than ever before.

For instance, in the case of those acknowledgment agreements, we think the liquidity they help add to the housing finance system will help reduce the possibility of issuer failure. We will therefore continue to invest resources in supporting their use. But as use and demand for the agreements become more sophisticated, we are becoming more rigorous in how we assess individual requests. Moreover, the approval process for acknowledgement agreements will take longer with insufficient resources.

Of Course, acknowledgment agreements aren’t the only financing tools we monitor. Issuers are using a variety of tools to build capital and liquidity and cutting-edge innovators are slicing and dicing servicing duties in ever-new ways.

For Ginnie Mae, the challenge is that examining these new risks is not part of our historical practices. We are working to fully develop the infrastructure to do so.

We are making strides to get a better handle on our Issuers to ensure the integrity of the Ginnie Mae security. Last year, we tightened capital and increased liquidity standards; this year, we launched our Issuer Operational Performance Profile – or I.O.P.P – to help Issuers see how they stack up with their competitors; and we are considering seeking more frequent financial information from our Issuers in an effort to help mitigate risk and enhance transparency.

But to accomplish all of this will take a significant increase in resources.

And that’s another challenge altogether.

Our staff at Ginnie Mae is small but our staffing needs are large and getting larger for the reasons I’ve outlined today.

And no matter the amount of profits we return to Treasury each year – and our profits have averaged over 900 million dollars the past 5 years – our funding for staff comes from congressional appropriations.

This would be a good time for me to note how appreciative Ginnie Mae is of the support MBA has actively and publicly provided on our behalf for additional funding.

So what happens if our funding remains flat? What does this mean for Ginnie Mae? What does this mean for you and our Issuers?

Our team must be prepared to answer those questions in the very near future if our funding needs do not keep up with changes in the industry. I don’t have an answer for you today but we will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure our guarantee and protect American taxpayers from losses that could come as a result of insufficient oversight of risks.

Let me end on a positive note. Together, Ginnie Mae and mortgage bankers kept the dream of home ownership alive for American homebuyers during the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes. You turned to Ginnie Mae when other sources of capital vanished and we, in turn, opened our doors to many innovative new entrants to keep the market flush with liquidity.

In that same spirit, let’s move forward to tackle new challenges, to meet the needs of tomorrow’s home buyers, and to help secure a solid financial future for all Americans … in our cities … in rural areas … and for our veterans.

11/3/2014

Remarks by President Tozer from the 5th Asia Pacific Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development

Remarks by President Tozer
November 3, 2014

PRESIDENT TOZER: Vice Minister Kim, thank you for the kind introduction. It is an honor to be here again at the International Forum on Housing Finance.

On behalf of the United States’ Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Julián Castro and Ginnie Mae, I congratulate the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport for organizing this important event. It is great that so many leaders in international housing finance are here today. I also want to congratulate the participants here at this conference.

When it comes to housing and urban development, our nations share common interests. We seek—as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared in 1941— “Freedom from Want,” the right to an adequate standard of living that secures prosperity for our people.

We come here looking for the same thing – the economic security that is at the core of today’s working group on housing finance. I commend you for making affordable housing finance a key principle in your work

Today, housing finance is a crucially important topic across the globe. The impact that urbanization has on sustainable housing is important in both domestic and international contexts.

In the case of the United States, more than 80% of U.S. households live in urban areas. More than 90% of U.S. population growth occurred in cities and metropolitan areas in the last decade. This trend is not unique to the United States; it is global.

The world recently passed a momentous milestone in which the majority of the world’s population now lives in urban areas. This unprecedented urban growth has profound implications for virtually every aspect of sustainable development. A full 60% percent of the land area expected to be urban by 2030, has yet to be built.

Let me repeat this, three-fifths of our cities have yet to be created.

Such a staggering statistic has serious policy implications. This means that the choices we make will determine whether our future communities are successful. Our actions over the next 10-15 years will determine the extent to which cities become drivers of innovation and economic growth. Our decisions will also affect social inclusion and environmental resiliency.

Mistakes we make today can have the unintended effect of deepening inequalities, stunting growth and exacerbating environmental risks.

At Ginnie Mae, we are convinced that our success requires us to adopt a cross-disciplinary approach to urbanization and housing finance that breaks down the traditional government policy siloes. This conference is one example of such an effort to examine and exchange best practices for a brighter future. Congratulations to you for bringing us all together.

As we have heard throughout this conference, our cities have significant economic and social importance, yet our communities face enormous challenges. Challenges related to affordable housing and infrastructure require innovation in public finance and private investment. As communities across the world continue to urbanize, a critical question will be how do we finance these investments in our communities?

We are helping find answers to this question today. We are discussing two issues of incredible importance, not only to Ginnie Mae, but to the global housing finance community at-large. The topics of: Financing Sustainable Housing and Housing Finance for Equal Opportunity are two principals deeply embedded in Ginnie Mae’s work.

Ginnie Mae is a wholly government owned corporation. Through the liquidity we provide to the mortgage finance market, and the capital that flows to lenders, we are helping make sure that financing for affordable housing is available to millions of low- and moderate income households across the United States. And we accomplish this with a sustainable business model that provides equal opportunity regardless of income or location—urban or rural.

Ginnie Mae facilitates housing finance in the single-family “ownership” space, and we also finance affordable rental housing, assisted living, healthcare and home equity conversion mortgages for senior citizens.

Ginnie Mae’s primary mission is to channel global capital into the national housing market. Our guarantee is at the heart of our business model.

We guarantee the timely payment of principal and interest on Mortgage-Backed Securities or MBS. We provide guarantees to the securities of federally insured or guaranteed loans that allow mortgage lenders to obtain a better price for their mortgage loans in the secondary mortgage market.

Let me explain how the Ginnie Mae business model works.

We do not buy or sell mortgages. Ginnie Mae Mortgage-Backed Securities, or MBS, are issued by financial institutions. These issuers pay Ginnie Mae a guaranty fee. The Ginnie Mae guaranty allows issuers/lenders to obtain funding at comparable interest rates paid for other sovereign bonds.

Our risk model stands behind three layers of protection: homeowner equity; insurance provided by the government agency that insured the loans; and corporate resources of the entity that issued the security.

The success of Ginnie Mae’s model is based on a balance of three things: the relationship of the private market with the U.S. government; delivering top securitization capabilities, and the explicit guarantee of the government that attracts global capital to America’s housing finance system.

It took an important understanding and recognition of historical developments in the U.S. housing finance market for Ginnie Mae to evolve. This success reflects the economic changes and the historical relationship between the government and the housing market. In the United States.

Ginnie Mae’s origins trace back to the Great Depression of the 1930’s, when historically high unemployment rates led to an unprecedented wave of loan defaults. The resulting surge in home foreclosures further depressed housing values and the nation’s overall economy. Congress passed the National Housing Act of 1934, a key component of the New Deal. The Act created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to help resuscitate the U.S. housing market and protect lenders from mortgage default.

FHA was a national mortgage loan insurance program. It encouraged banks, building and loan associations, and other institutions, to make loans because of the insurance against losses provided by the government.

In 1968, Congress created Ginnie Mae to focus on providing a guaranty backed by the full faith and credit of the United States for the timely payment of principal and interest on Mortgage Backed Securities, or MBS, secured by pools of government home loans. These loans are insured or guaranteed by the FHA, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA), and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program.

The VA’s home loan guaranty program was originally developed to assist veteran’s returning home in the mid-1940’s. The primary objective is to provide housing finance to veterans in areas where private financing is not generally available. As a result, this innovative program has helped veterans and their families purchase their first house with no down payment—delivering housing for tens of millions of servicemembers and their families. Because of this program, the VA has helped veterans establish credit as the basis of borrowing to acquire a home and establish a business.

Tracing its origins to the Great Depression, the Rural Development or RD program has also helped extend housing loans to low-income families and senior citizens in rural parts of the United States. RD has provided loans for single-family homes, apartments, and community facilities. Their work has provided affordable sustainable housing in rural areas: thereby making rural America a better place to live for Native American tribes, farm laborers, the elderly and low-income families.

Today, Ginnie Mae remains the primary financing mechanism for all government-insured or government-guaranteed mortgage loans, including FHA, VA and Rural Development.

In 1970, Ginnie Mae developed and issued the very first MBS, which allowed many loans to be pooled and used as collateral in a security that could be sold in the secondary market. With a guaranty for the timely receipt of principal and interest, MBS can be attractive investments for investors worldwide.

MBS supports housing finance by channeling investment capital from markets all over the globe for use in lending to support neighborhoods across the nation. Ginnie Mae’s role from the beginning has been to provide access to capital for affordable housing. Throughout its existence and particularly during the Great Recession, Ginnie Mae has been profitable, and the value of its MBS has been recognized by investors.

It has weathered all storms without any appropriation from general tax revenue or assistance from the U.S. Treasury. In fact, Ginnie Mae has a surplus every year since the issuance of its first MBS in 1970. Ginnie Mae continues to fulfill its mission of attracting global capital into America’s housing finance markets. Since 1970, it has poured approximately $5 trillion of liquidity into mortgage finance markets, helping to fund millions of units of housing.

It took Ginnie Mae about 40 years, from its inaugural MBS issued in 1970 until 2010 to reach the $1 trillion mark in guarantees outstanding, and then only four additional years to reach the $1.5 trillion mark.

Through forums like this, we value the exchange of information on housing finance and housing markets as we seek enhanced understanding of mortgage markets throughout the world.

As we have seen at this conference, sustainable housing finance is not only cherished in the U.S. and Korea but throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

In closing, we can learn much from success and much more from our failures. Ginnie Mae’s success comes from a successful government guaranty and public/private partnerships. The guaranty provides liquidity to channel global capital into the nation’s housing markets to promote affordable housing.

Today, the guaranty enables more homeowners to access affordable housing finance: providing safety and liquidity to the U.S. housing sector.

Again, I congratulate the conference for its formal recognition of the importance of housing finance and providing access to financing for low- to moderate-income households.

We are pleased to be part of this forum. I am confident that this conference will lead us to a more innovative and secure finance system for our housing markets.

I thank the Ministry for hosting this platform for a productive exchange of policy information. By doing this, we are taking an important step to enable more people —around the world—to access affordable housing finance. Thank you.

6/12/2013

Remarks by Michael Drayne from the 2013 Mortgage Bankers Association Secondary Market Conference & Expo

Remarks by Michael Drayne, Senior Vice President, Office of Issuer & Portfolio Management, Ginnie Mae

2013 Mortgage Bankers Association Secondary Market Conference & Expo
"RMBS Servicing and the Housing Recovery"

Tuesday, May 07, 2013
New York, NY

Servicing underlies our mission of bringing capital from all over the world into the housing finance system in this country. The total of the outstanding single-family Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities right now is about $1.4 trillion. That means there is about $1.4 trillion in servicing rights supporting that outstanding MBS. We need to have a universe of mortgage servicers that are up to the task and able to fulfill their responsibilities under our program.

The way see servicing at the moment is very much focused on a significant and interesting transformation taking place in the market right now. To put it in context and give some numbers, we think that about a third of the $1.4 trillion in the Ginnie Mae portfolio—the ownership of those servicing rights— will be changing hands over a three-year period, starting in mid-2011 to the middle of next year. That’s a huge change for the Ginnie Mae program. That’s an enormous amount of servicing rights to change ownership. It’s not simply that the ownership is changing, but the new owners of the servicing rights are largely institutions that are new to Ginnie Mae, or new to servicing, or new to the industry as a whole. Managing that change is something that is consuming a lot of our thinking and a lot of our resources right now.

There are a lot of interesting aspects to that. We’re, of course, concerned with basic questions, such as: Do these entities have the competence? Do they have the financial resources to fulfill their function in the Ginnie Mae program? We’re certainly aware that by and large the new owners of servicing rights are non-depositories, whereas, the great bulk of Ginnie Mae servicing had been held by depositories for a long time. A lot of these newer entities have a background in more specialized parts of servicing—or their staff does—and they portray themselves as being more able in areas such as default servicing than some of the megabank servicers have been. That’s another aspect — servicing is sorting itself out in ways that permit a more specialized focus.

There are two key objectives that we have in managing this transformation and the Ginnie Mae program as a whole. One of them is, very simply, we just don’t want failures. Our role is to guarantee that the mortgage-backed security holders will be paid no matter what. We want to make sure that servicers that are overseeing the administration of the pools will be able to make these payments. In some ways, we at Ginnie Mae live in a very simple world, and everything we do revolves around making sure we are taking all the steps and performing the due diligence and monitoring that we can to make sure there aren’t failures.

The second thing we care a lot about is related to that. We want there to be a liquid market for our servicing rights. We have a number of reasons for caring very passionately about that. One is that we want to continue to attract hundreds of billions of dollars into the housing finance system. As I described, what makes that possible is to have servicers that are willing to hold those servicing rights. If there’s a liquid market, and servicers know that if their circumstances change there will be someone else willing to hold those servicing rights, that will make people more willing to participate in the market.

The other, more parochial, reason we care a lot about the liquidity of the market is that if there is a failure, if there is an Issuer of ours that is not able to fulfill its obligations, we would rather there be somebody else that is willing and able to take on those responsibilities immediately, rather than have Ginnie Mae take them on. It’s a strategic initiative of ours to develop other avenues for dealing with default situations than what Ginnie has historically done — take possession of the servicing rights. We did that with the TBW default in 2009. It’s an enormous, time-consuming exercise that doesn’t play to our core strengths. We just prefer someone else do that. To the extent there’s a liquid market for Ginnie Mae servicing rights, that helps us. In the next couple of years, you’re going to see us devote ourselves to doing whatever we can to identify other parties that could take on servicing rights in distress situations and make it easy for them to do it.

That’s really what we’re about. A lot of the more specialized issues that I think the panel will talk about this afternoon are of interest to us, but we really look at them through that narrow lens. For example, the question of servicing compensation — there are lots of interesting viewpoints one could have. It’s a complicated issue in a lot of ways. The main thing Ginnie Mae cares about though is that we want servicers to be compensated at a fair level for what they do. If servicers feel like the compensation is too thin, they’re going to be a lot less likely to take on a Ginnie Mae portfolio at a time when we want there to be a liquid market and we want them to take on a Ginnie Mae portfolio. That’s an example of how, in these areas having to do with policy that governs mortgage servicing, our viewpoint is tied to the health of the Ginnie Mae program.

I think Ginnie Mae is unusual in that, while we are completely a governmental entity (we are administered through the Department of Housing and Urban Development), we are an independent government-owned corporation, and we have a commercial focus. For the health of the Ginnie program, we really need servicing in this country to be a profitable endeavor that people want to take part in. If servicers have a hard time making a reasonable amount of money for the services they provide, it’s not good for us because we have this gigantic portfolio that’s growing and will need to be serviced. We need to pay attention to the market and the liquidity of the market and try to inform the policy debate in order to make sure we are going to have a servicing industry that can stand us and homeowners in good stead for a long time to come.

[…]

Moderator: How do you see this new regulatory burden affecting the industry?

Drayne: A lot of the new applicants we see in the Ginnie Mae program who want to become servicers are fairly small shops choosing to come in by using a sub-servicer, which is fine in theory and fine with Ginnie Mae. But it means there are a lot of people trying to play this game who weren’t trying to play this game before, and they’re essentially outsourcing the need to invest in regulatory compliance or systems to a pretty small number of other entities. And that’s not necessarily a bad trend in and of itself, but it’s something we’re watching closely. I think the whole industry should watch closely. Is this going to work with lots of people trying to do things they haven’t done, relying on third party entities to handle the new complexities in this line of work?

Moderator: Can you talk a little about the criteria you use in evaluating counterparties?

Drayne: The Ginnie Mae model is different than Fannie’s and Freddie’s. We have fewer areas we’re concerned about. We don’t have credit risks — unlike Fannie and Freddie. That is the province of FHA, VA and Rural Housing. What we’re looking at is very simple: Do servicers have the wherewithal to collect money and remit money and report on all of those activities? What we’re looking at is largely a function of financial stability, because particularly with these government programs, the amount of time servicers will be responsible for advancing funds is a lot longer than it is in the conventional world. Financial stability and resources are a big part of it, as is just basic competency in managing the flow of money and managing the custodial accounts. That’s what we’re looking at. I will say that Ginnie Mae has more resources than it’s had in the past, and we’re starting to expand the areas that we look at and do some better types of reporting to Issuers about how we think they’re performing. We’re looking more at things like Issuers who have outlying performance when it comes to prepayment speeds and the impact that might have on the program. So we’re doing more, but it all comes down to the basics I’ve described.

[…]

Moderator: One last question. What are the key lessons learned from the crisis—macro lessons, and looking forward, what are some of the key challenges facing us as we try to build a new servicing paradigm?

[…]

Drayne: I’ll go small with my answer—just a micro concept. We were having a meeting this morning with one of our largest Issuers. We were going over a bunch of operational issues — six or seven of them — that are of concern to Ginnie Mae and this Issuer. We thought we were talking about six or seven different issues, but at the end of the conversation, we realized it was all the same issue. Everything we were talking about had to do with the prevalence, unforeseen a few years ago, of going back into loans and making some modification or change to a loan after the loan originally closed, and all of the operational problems that result from that. Obviously, nobody ever thought of this or anticipated that there would be so much of this going on. To me, it’s an open question: Is this something that arose because of particular circumstances that lasted a few bad years, and we’ll just go back to normal, or is there something fundamentally different about servicing a mortgage loan? When you think the loan is closed, now are you really just starting a chapter where there could be lots of different things happening? I don’t have an opinion about that, but it’s been such a big, unforeseen development that I think it’s an interesting thing to wonder about.

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