Structured Finance Association (“SFA”) is now accepting nominations for its Board of Directors. Our annual director rotations will be elected at our upcoming September board meeting. SFA members may nominate themselves or another qualified industry participant from an SFA member firm.* Self-nominations are welcome.

The Structured Finance Association (SFA), a leading trade association representing the structured finance and securitization industry, today announced that Dr. Scott Frame has joined the organization as Chief Economist and Head of MBS Policy. In this role, Dr. Frame will serve as SFA’s principal economist and utilize his years of expertise to provide strategic guidance that drives the association’s economic policy analysis.

On Friday, April 1, SFA CEO Michael Bright discussed Brazil and China forgoing the dollar in favor of their own currencies for bilateral trade on Fox Business.

SFA’s Research Corner considers credit card ABS which, unlike other asset classes, are tied to the prime rate and are particularly sensitive to the Fed’s rate hikes. Credit card debt is nearing a record $1 trillion, up 15% year-over-year. Younger borrowers are mounting debt at nearly twice that rate and also pushing into delinquency at twice the rate for all age groups.

On March 27, SFA submitted a comment letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding their recently re-proposed rule on the “Prohibition of Conflicts of Interest in Securitizations.” In the letter, SFA highlights that with the sweeping scope of the rule, additional work remains to be done to appropriately assess the impact of the proposed rule on financial markets and securitization participants.

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.

In Research Corner, we see the waiting game playing out in student loans and student loan ABS (SL ABS). Performance for post-2010 private credit SL ABS and private credit refinancing SL ABS has been “solid” thus far, according to the S&P Student Loan ABS newsletter. The rating agency expects adequate levels of credit enhancement on investment-grade SL ABS to “absorb deterioration and remain stable.”

SFA CEO Michael Bright was quoted this week in a NerdWallet article discussing the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Bright comments that the government’s messaging strategy will have a major impact on consequences of this banking failure and stressed the Fed’s dual responsibility to mitigate effects of SVB’s collapse while combatting inflation.

As part of SFA’s work to develop an ESG reporting and disclosure framework for RMBS, SFA will host a webinar with guest speakers Steve Baden and Laurel Elam, from the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET), to present and answer questions on RESNET’s Home Energy Rating System (HERS). The webinar is scheduled for March 21st from 1:00-2:00 PM ET.