Consumer ABS

Year-to-date 2012 ABS transaction volume has hit the largest year-to-date figures since 2008 with $32 billion representing 37 deals, according to numbers Dealogic released today.

Capital One Financial Corp. agreed as part of its purchase of ING Direct USA to originate loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to borrowers with low credit scores. But five months after giving verbal assurances to the Federal Reserve and consumer groups that it would accept FHA applications with minimum FICO scores of 580, Capital One still is not originating such loans.

Standard & Poor's said this morning that a significant portion of FFELP SLABS ‘AAA’ ratings have been lowered to ‘AA+’ because of the U.S. sovereign downgrade.

Capital One Financial Corp. on Tuesday cleared the final regulatory approval needed to buy ING Direct USA for $9 billion after nine months of talks.

American Credit Acceptance is planning to sell a subprime auto ABS called American Credit Acceptance Receivables Trust Series 2012-1. The 144A securitization rated by Standard & Poor's is worth $150 million.

FICO scores cover a much wider demographic than proprietary models used by ABS issuers to predict collateral performance, according to FICO Senior Director Adem Yilmaz.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) submitted comments to Federal regulators yesterday regarding the proposed Volcker rule provisions on ABS and insurance-linked securities (ILS). The Volcker Rule was added by Section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The Federal Reserve Board has decided to delay a decision on Capital One Financial Corp.'s $9 billion deal for ING Direct USA, a spokeswoman for the central bank said Monday.

DBRS today published its U.S. Private Student Loan Performance Report for 4Q11. The study contains indices that benchmark loan performance metrics for the private SLABS sector.

Standard & Poor's said in a release Monday that GM Financial's proprietary credit scoring was a better predictor of the performance of their subprime auto ABS than FICO scores.