The Structured Finance Association (SFA) applauded the decision today by the Federal Housing Finance Agency to lower the previously announced UMBS Fee from 50 basis points to 9.375 basis points, a reduction of more than 80 percent. The FHFA said the reduced fee will go into effect April 1.

SFA submitted a letter to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Fed) in response to the Fed’s proposed regulation to implement the Adjustable Interest Rate (LIBOR) Act. SFA applauds the Fed’s comprehensive proposal and is strongly supportive of the proposal, with a few imperative remaining clarifications that should be addressed so that consumer and investor contracts transition as seamlessly as Congress intended.

The Structured Finance Association (SFA) submitted a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in response to the SEC’s proposed rule “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors” (the “Proposed Rule”).

The Structured Finance Association (SFA) is gathering market feedback on the new upfront 50 basis point cross-collateral guarantee on Uniform Mortgage-Backed Securities (UMBS) underlying certain TBA securities that was announced by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Structured Finance Association (SFA) released the following statement after the U.S. Senate confirmed Sandra Thompson to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) by a vote of 49 to 46.

The Structured Finance Foundation, an affiliate of the Structured Finance Association (SFA), on Friday, May 13, 2022 honored recipients of a scholarship it established at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) for students pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree in finance, accounting, or economics in the School of Business and Public Administration. The scholarship was established in 2020 with a gift of $80,000. Manda Burnham and Hansi Lara Cruz were both awarded a $10,000 scholarship at a ceremony on campus.

The Structured Finance Association (SFA) responded to S&P’s recently proposed changes to their insurer risk-based capital adequacy methodology and assumptions. If implemented as proposed, the changes would greatly impact the credit quality assessments of investments rated solely by the other rating agencies as well as those that are unrated, creating far reaching impact in the market by embedding inefficiencies in the allocation of insurance company capital in financial markets.

The Structured Finance Association (SFA) applauded inclusion of language in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 – also known as the “omnibus” government funding bill – that would ease the transition away from the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR), which is the benchmark index currently used to determine the interest rate that investors receive on floating-rate bonds and consumers and businesses pay on some loans.

The Structured Finance Association welcomed separate court rulings affirming the “valid-when-made” doctrine, a nearly 200-year-old principle in contract law that ensures the interest on a loan permissible before transfer continues to be permissible after. The rulings granted summary judgment to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), signaling that the rules in question were properly set forth and promulgated by the respective agencies.