A group of mortgage originators, issuers and investors is close to a consensus on a new process for enforcing representations and warranties on private-label securities.

On a day when the stock market soared upwards, the three stand-alone mortgage insurers all saw their stock price drop. This is in apparent reaction to an article that appeared over the weekend in another publication.

Fraudsters that previously focused on breaking into new accounts are now putting more attention on cracking the security barriers of older card accounts, causing the incidence of such crimes to rise, according to Experian PLC.

The call for loan-level mortgage data sounded soon after the industry began to pick up the pieces from the housing market crash. It's grown louder since then and the information is slowly becoming more available. But without a way to identify and decipher what it means, the data are worthless. Luckily, there is new technology coming to market that provides lenders, investors and servicers the ability to monitor the loans being originated, evaluate their quality and monitor repayment performance.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, some mortgage lenders are choosing to relax underwriting requirements ever so slightly to offset a dramatic drop in loan origination volumes.

Legislation is expected to be put in place next week for a new five-year Greek austerity plan that would deliver another €12 billion ($17 billion) of aid to the country, which faces the possibility of defaulting.

GTP Acquisition Partners is offering the Class C and Class F notes of Secured Tower Revenue Notes, Series 2011-2. Moody’s Investors Service has assigned provisional ratings of 'A2 (sf)' to the $490 million Class C notes and 'Ba3 (sf)' to the $155 million Class F notes. The offering is backed by wireless towers.

Barclays Capital reports that June CMBS conduit liquidations hit the new high of more than 450 deals worth nearly $1.9 billion, an increase that bodes well for special servicers of these portfolios.

A recent Barclays Capital report highlighted the slowdown of the private credit student loan ABS market where issuance has dropped 60% from the same time last year. The only two ABS deals to price since mid-July were from this year totaling $1.4 billion.

In the first two of what promises to be several legal actions seeking compensation for the corporate credit union crisis, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) sued two of the biggest Wall Street banks last week seeking to recover losses from the now-toxic mortgage-backed securities they sold to four of the five failed corporates.

Freddie Mac has entered into a proposed settlement with creditors of the Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. (TBW) bankruptcy that will allow the GSE to gain control of TBW-related mortgage servicing rights and $54 million in loan receipts in TBW deposits.

The EDHEC-Risk Institute has hired Frank J. Fabozzi to join the faculty as a part of its North American strategy, effective Aug. 1.