Hi, I’m Adam DeSanctis with the Mortgage Minute, the latest news from the Mortgage Bankers Association. MBA last week submitted its comment letter in response to the Federal Banking Agency’s Basel III endgame re-proposal on bank capital requirements, while also joining coalition letters on key affordable housing investment issues. The proposal represents a significant improvement over the flawed twenty twenty-three version and reflects years of sustained advocacy by MBA and its members. But we believe there’s still work to do. In our letter, we urge regulators to further tailor the framework to the realities of the US financial system and mortgage market. While the proposal makes important progress, certain provisions continue to overstate the risks of key mortgage-related assets and activities, which could discourage banks from supporting housing finance. Specifically, MBA recommended reducing the proposed risk weight on mortgage servicing assets, improving the capital treatment of warehouse lending, recognizing the risk-reducing benefits of private mortgage insurance, adopting a more risk-sensitive framework for commercial real estate lending, and lowering unnecessary capital burdens on certain securitization exposures, including GSE-backed securities. Overall, the repo- re-proposal marks meaningful progress, but additional refinements are needed to ensure banks can continue serving as lenders, servicers, and liquidity providers that support a strong and affordable housing finance system. We look forward to continued engagement with regulators as they work toward a final rule, which is expected later this year or early in twenty twenty-seven. That’s it for this week. Thank you for listening.
Adam DeSanctis, VP, Communications at Mortgage Bankers Association
As a strategic public affairs and communications executive with nearly two decades of experience, Adam has deep expertise in strategy, management, and media relations. He is widely regarded as an expert in a variety of communications, including advocacy, brand, executive, crisis, grassroots, and social media. In his career, he has been the MBA spokesperson on a wide variety of real estate research and advocacy-related issues, promoted MBA research and advocacy efforts to financial, political, and trade industry media and on MBA’s social media channels, and secured media opportunities for MBA leadership on key real estate trends and issues, generated media coverage for MBA’s research and data on mortgage applications, credit availability, homebuilder applications, mortgage forbearance/delinquencies, commercial real estate originations, and forecasts, and other industry analysis, developed key strategic initiatives for MBA’s organizational public affairs plan, media relations and member communications support for mPower, MBA’s Opens Doors Foundation and MBA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.