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In recent months, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston’s
Mortgage Partnership Finance® (MPF®) program team has been
taking an innovative, hands-on approach to help get members up
to speed on the characteristics of the secondary market.
In the Bank’s Mortgage Clues training sessions, members
are immersed in the history of the secondary market, the risks
involved in participating, and a custom-designed approach to mitigating
risk.
“The training not only gives members insight into the secondary
market but helps them originate more loans by overcoming potential
obstacles,” says Carol Spiller, technical secondary market
manager at the Bank. “It gives them the ability to say ‘yes’ more
and ‘no’ less.”
Although the training is offered through the Bank’s MPF
Department, the Mortgage Clues training isn’t specifically
focused on MPF — the Bank’s secondary-market program. “The
training is geared toward helping members in a broader sense understand
the secondary market and use it effectively,” says Mark Sullivan,
vice president/secondary market sales manager at the Bank, who
along with Ms. Spiller hosts the training sessions.
Ms. Spiller says the centerpiece of the training is a card game
devised to help members work through possible risk scenarios and
solutions. “The game gives members various adverse criteria
(credit, capacity, collateral, and FICO) associated with mortgage
loans they originate,” she says. “We let them pick
one card from each category of adverse selection and use the selections
as a starting point to create their own loan scenarios,” she
says.
“We then help them use the adverse criteria to assess loan
risk and find appropriate cures,” she says. “We try
to help them as a group work out potential resolutions. We advise
them on documentation issues and provide ideas on preparing solutions
and narratives for each file they underwrite.”
Even members who ultimately don’t choose to participate
in the secondary market can benefit from working through the lending-process
scenarios that make up a key component of the training. “Our
goal,” says Ms. Spiller, “is to evoke a thought process
to help members enhance the eligibility of their products for the
secondary market.”
Ms. Spiller and Mr. Sullivan have offered the training to a number
of member institutions. Ten to 16 members from each institution
have participated in the trainings, including senior lenders, loan
officers, and underwriting and processing staff.
“I enjoy doing the trainings, and the feedback so far has
been very, very positive,” says Ms. Spiller.
Mark Pitkin, vice president/senior loan officer at member Sugar
River Savings Bank in Newport, New Hampshire, says the training
has helped his staff take a fresh look at the lending process by
analyzing what works and doesn’t work in the secondary market.
“The training took us through the process of mitigating
risk and making these loans work,” says Mr. Pitkin, whose
institution has made extensive use of the Bank’s MPF program. “It
was a real big help for all of us.”
For more information about the Bank's MPF program, please call
888-675-0556, Mark Sullivan at 617-292-9672, William Dolan at 617-292-969,
Carol Spiller
at 617-292-9745, or Paul Pouliot at 617-292-9641.
"Mortgage Partnership Finance" and "MPF"
are registered trademarks of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. |
