The Structured Finance Association (SFA) has sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission urging the need to protect investors while maintaining the strengths of our financial markets when the Commission considers its re-proposed rule on the Prohibition Against Conflicts of Interests in Certain Securitizations.

The Mid-Sized Bank Coalition of America (MBCA) sent a letter to the Treasury, the FDIC, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve requesting for expansion of the FDIC insurance program to protect all deposits for the next two years.

On Monday, March 20, President Joe Biden used his first veto to strike down House Joint Resolution 30 that would have disapproved the Department of Labor’s final rule allowing fund managers to consider Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations in their investment decisions in 401(k) and retirement plans.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that investors are anxiously awaiting the sale of Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) roughly $78 billion agency RMBS. Although the “market is deep enough to absorb even large liquidations,” increased supply in an already “weakened market” could push prices even lower for these bonds, particularly if other banks, faced with their own liquidity issues are forced to sell off their Agency RMBS holdings.

On March 22, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and officials at the Central Bank unanimously voted to raise interest rates by a quarter point for the ninth time in a year, effectively bringing the benchmark rate to a range between 4.75% and 5%.

On March 20, Tim Scott (R-SC), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee and Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, submitted joint letters to the Fed and the Federal Depository Insurance Corporation (FDIC) asserting that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank were the result of incompetence within the regulators and requesting the names and dates of all Fed and FDIC employees’ supervisory activities of the banks for the last two years to be delivered to them within 11 days.

The SFA ATR/QM Task Force will work to update the uniform best practice testing standards for performing due diligence on qualified mortgage (QM) loans.

SFA’s RMBS Data Tape Task Force will be meeting for a series of weekly calls on Fridays from 1:00-2:00PM ET, starting March 31st. This task force aims to standardize the reporting of material information in relation to Private-Label Securities RMBS transactions.

On March 13, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) announced its centralized solution, the LIBOR Benchmark Index, has been added to its Legal Notice System (LENS) to aid the transition from LIBOR benchmark rates to Secured Overnight Financing Rate Data (SOFR) as well as other new reference rates.

Democratic lawmakers are calling for a reversal of the 2018 Republican-led law that loosened banking regulations in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) led dozens of Democratic lawmakers to introduce the Secure Viable Banking Act, legislation which repeals the 2018 rollback of critical Dodd-Frank protections, citing SVB’s failure as the consequence of lack of banking regulation and oversight.