On October 22, 2014 the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission jointly issued a final rule to implement the credit risk retention requirements of section 15G of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15. U.S.C. 78o-11), as added by section 941 of the Dodd-Frank Act. The final rule will be effective one year after publication in the Federal Register for residential mortgage-backed securitizations and two years after publication for all other securitization types.
Section 15G generally requires the securitizer of asset-backed securities to retain not less than 5 percent of the credit risk of the assets collateralizing the asset-backed securities. Section 15G includes a variety of exemptions from these requirements, including an exemption for asset-backed securities that are collateralized exclusively by residential mortgages that qualify as qualified residential mortgages (QRMs), as such term is defined by the new rule.
Most of our readers will not be directly impacted by this rule, but all creditors need to consider making loans that qualify as QRMs, to preserve liquidity.
A copy of the press release is available here.
A copy of the final rule is available here.
