Ginnie Mae will start to release additional disclosure information on a daily basis for new issues beginning in January. Aside from this, starting on the fourth business day in February 2004, Ginnie will also make these new disclosures available for all outstanding Ginnie Mae mortgage-backeds. These details follow on the announcement made by Ginnie Mae at an investors' symposium last March,
Stephen Ledbetter, acting vice president of the office of capital markets at Ginnie, said the enhancements on the Ginnie data were made using best practices as a benchmark. They believe that the additional new information Ginnie is providing will allow for fuller price discovery in the market for their securities, which would help in their goal to provide lower-cost financing to FHA and VA borrowers.
For new issues, Ginnie will provide quartile distribution information on the different weighted averages, such as weighted average coupon, weighted average loan age and weighted average original loan term. This will also be the first time Ginnie is going to provide data on average original loan sizes, both in terms of weighted average data and quartile information.
Providing quartile information will give investors a better idea of how homogenous the loans in a particular pool are. By having this information handy, investors would have a better handle on prepayment speeds on Ginnie Mae securities.
Initially, three new disclosures - original LTV, property type and loan purpose - will be disclosed on Ginnie Mae MBS through Ginnie's current quarterly update process (which occurs in February, April, July and October) but not at issuance.
Ginnie is aiming to make information on the changes available on its Web site this week.
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