Small lenders must have access to secondary mortgage market

Small lender access to the secondary mortgage market is vital to ensuring the housing finance market benefits consumers, CUNA Senior Director of Regulatory Advocacy and Counsel Elizabeth LaBerge told a Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) listening session Thursday.

“The secondary market must be open to lenders of all sizes on an equitable basis. CUNA understands that the users of a secondary market will be required to pay for the use of such market through fees, appropriate risk premiums and other means,” she said. “CUNA thanks the FHFA for formally ending mortgage volume discounts in 2019 and it is critical that guarantee fees or other fees/premiums should never have any relationship to lender volume going forward.

“Additionally, CUNA would caution against regimes that require lenders to retain significant amounts of risk beyond that represented by actuarially appropriate guarantee fees, as these risk retention arrangements may have a disproportionately negative impact on small lenders that are less able to manage such risk and could therefore result in less consumer choice,” she added.

 

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