Not to be written off

This week has seen the Bank of England publish utilisation data under the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) and the almost universal verdict that the scheme hasn’t worked quite the way it should have. Well I’m not in that camp. At least not at the moment.

Of all the schemes we have seen since the onset of the credit crisis, the FLS is the first one that targets lending to the real economy and incentivises banks and building societies to grow their lending overall. Unfortunately, although data has revealed a strongly growing list of participants in the scheme, latest count there are 35, net lending by FLS participants to 30^th September was +£0.5bn and total FLS drawdowns from the Bank were £4.4bn. However, probably unsurprisingly, the media headlines have focussed on the six largest lenders and the conclusion is different: overall lending across these lenders fell by £1.04 billion during the period.

So why is this happening and can anything be done to finesse the scheme? Firstly, falls in lending of the largest banks shouldn’t be a surprise. This group includes Lloyds and RBS, both of which are undergoing radical surgery and deleveraging. The fact that they are shrinking their loan books shouldn’t be a surprise. Secondly, many analysts claim that lending is being focussed on lower risk areas such as low LTV mortgages rather than areas that need help such as first time buyers. I am sure this is true.

Can anything be done about it? Yes but with difficulty is the answer. The FLS is a compromise. It was put together in a very short time and is basically a tweaked Special Liquidity Scheme. The obvious thing to do would be to tweak it a bit further and change the incentives to focus lending activity where it is needed. Although simple in practice I think this is unlikely to happen. The tightrope that the Bank of England had to walk was to balance the needs of the market within the constraints imposed by Europe. Yes Europe! To focus the FLS in the way I describe would almost certainly fall foul of the European State Aid rules and would be deemed to have provided an unfair advantage over other countries. Frustrating but there it is.

So the FLS is doing the best it can. It really is still early days and there are lenders coming on stream all the time. Some of the smaller lenders have already commented on the fact they are able to offer more competitive products on the back of the scheme which can’t be a bad thing. We need to give it some more time and assume that overall it is beneficial to the market. In my view we should be looking to the smaller lenders to make the difference to the key risk areas that need help and not the large banks who can’t or just don’t need to.

One to watch.

You can’t have it both ways

I was a little surprised to see Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke’s comments this week about how the overly stringent lending requirements of banks are hurting the US housing recovery. He said that ‘the pendulum has swung too far from the easy lending days of the housing boom complaining that ‘overly tight lending standards may now be preventing creditworthy borrowers from buying homes, slowing the revival in housing and impeding recovery’.

I’m not sure how timely these comments were given that the US Commerce Department subsequently revealed housing starts had risen to their high level for more than four years.

More importantly I’m not sure how helpful it is to suggest its time for lenders to relax their lending criteria at this time. Wasn’t much of the blame for the start of the Credit Crisis aimed at the US for being irresponsible and lending to individuals who hadn’t a hope in hell of repaying their mortgage from day one?

I’m not saying Mr Bernanke is advocating lending to credit impaired individuals but is it the right message to encourage lenders to relax criteria, especially since there are encouraging signs from the US housing market?

Sifting through the data - or a tale of mixed messages

There seems to be a fair amount of confusion out there at the moment with regard to how the UK economic recovery is going. We have Sir Mervyn King,governor of the Bank of England saying that the UK economy was recovering at a ‘slow uncertain pace’ and it was ‘not clear if positive indicators would persist’ whilst Charlie Bean, deputy governor of the Bank of England, seems much more optimistic suggesting that there were ‘reasons for optimism’ for the UK economy with real ‘signs of progress’.

Conversely mortgage lending seem to be picking up, with the Bank of England suggesting that mortgage approvals are gathering in pace, thanks in some part to the Funding for Lending Scheme, yet house prices remain subdued with the Nationwide Building Society predicting that the housing market will take some time to gain any sort of momentum.

It’s all very confusing and it seems daily we are getting a mixed bag of messages.

For what it’s worth I think that things will gradually start to improve in the UK economy next year and we will see more consistent data coming through. I also agree with John Cridland at the CBI who suggests that we need to get used to a ‘new normal’ of slower growth with annual expansion of 2% looking pretty good.

As for the housing market, I think that too will perk up albeit gradually. However I am concerned about the longevity (or lack of it) of the Funding for Lending Scheme. I think thus far, that it is has been a force for good encouraging banks and building societies to lend and probably assisted financial institutions to price more competitively. But what happens when the Scheme ends, currently pencilled in for 31 January 2014?

Food for thought….

Getting by with a little help

Interesting survey from the Yorkshire Building Society out this week which suggests that 56% of potential first time buyers are concerned about how long it would take to save up for a deposit to buy a first property. The research goes on to say that it can take up to eight years on average so probably a lot longer if you live in London.

It also says that 7% of potential buyers plan to go to their parents to ask for extra help and almost a fifth of first-time buyers who had bought a home in the last year told the study they had had help from ‘the bank of Mum and Dad’ with their deposit compared with 13% of people who bought a property five years ago.

Two things come to mind. Eight years is a long time to save up for a 20% deposit so perhaps more should be done to help this largely disenfranchised group to get on the property ladder. I think this is an area that the current Funding for Lending scheme doesn’t really address in its present form, positive though the initiative is. Maybe the scheme could be refined to assist this group - it’s a segment of the market that is presently being overlooked. Lenders should be incentivised to target the higher LTV brackets with appropriate products.

And secondly, shouldn’t we as responsible lenders look at developing more innovative products for promoting shared ownership? The market is obviously out there so it makes perfect sense to invest our time and ideas in this area.

There are shared equity initiatives which we could and should exploit.

Reasons to be cheerful part II

Despite the IMF’s gloomy outlook for UK GDP this year there is some good news in the funding markets.

Last week I chaired the CML annual funding conference – their 8^th and the sixth of which has been held since the credit crisis kicked in. In recent times it would have been easy for this conference to take on a gloomy air, but this time we had some unequivocally positive news to discuss: Where there were some 10-20 Residential Mortgage  Backed Securities (RMBS) investors a year ago (down from literally hundreds before 2008), we are now more than likely looking at 150 or so today and this number is growing. As a result of this, we now have increased demand from investors lowering costs for issuers.  

So investor confidence has improved. But why are investors deciding that RMBS could be a good thing? Well apart from having to find somewhere else to invest bearing in mind that gilt and cash returns are low, defaults in UK RMBS are negligible (0.01% UK RMBS defaulted)*.

Although the UK economy is still in the doldrums, it has not ‘blown up’ or even threatened to do so. We now have the ability to take whatever steps perceived necessary to ensure that the right measures are taken. Having said that, the economy remains in intensive care: it is under scrutiny and active management. I expect, as does the market, that further tweaks to policy and support will be necessary.

The Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) has played its part too in that it has eased markets considerably and brought down interbank LIBOR rates.  What made this happen? Well the major banks and building societies are not issuing covered bonds or issuing securitised paper to the extent that they were because they don’t have to – they have access to the FLS. This puts banks in a more dominant position from a supply and demand level and this has driven spreads down marking a profound shifting in pricing in the last month. These developments could certainly allow the markets to function meaningfully once again. We now have the very real situation where issuance of RMBS is a cost effective funding mechanism once more and is close to the overall cost of borrowing under the subsidised FLS. Benchmark deals issued recently by Yorkshire Building Society through their Brass No 2 programme and Investec though RMS26 have shown this to be the case.

So what next for securitisation? The stigma that securitisation had is certainly fading and the track record of UK RMBS speaks for itself. Let’s hope the Bank of England sees this and gets behind these positive moves. Personally, I still think the Bank could provide more help to the market through the provision of permanent liquidity facilities to support RMBS and covered bonds. They have already shown themselves to be important components of banks funding and have been resilient in their performance despite the naysayers. And importantly, this wouldn’t cost the taxpayer a penny.

 

*Source: Standard and Poor’s

Reasons to be cheerful

Mortgage deposit levels for first-time buyers have fallen below 20% for the first time in three years according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Well that’s a reason to cheer even if it has only dropped to 19%. It’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Also encouragingly the number of high LTV products on the market has jumped during August, so says Moneyfacts. Some 36 new mortgage deals with LTVs of 85% or above were launched during the month, some way away from the disappointing numbers in July which fell away to 26. And during August five new products were launched with LTVs of 95%.

So maybe the Funding for Lending and NewBuy scheme is starting to kick in. I truly hope so. However I was disappointed that if the research from Rightmove is to be believed that the public perception of the NewBuy scheme is still very limited. The survey suggested that homeowners and first-time buyers have little knowledge of this initiative – some 34% first-time buyers and 51% of other home movers.

Rather disappointing. Think what could be achieved in lending terms if we could raise awareness amongst all interested parties. I guess it’s largely up to the Government to do this but lenders and builders alike should all play a part.

After all it’s great to have some positive news to report to our beleaguered first-time buyers at last!

The return of competition

I read, without any surprise, that Tesco Bank has made the first set of rate reductions to its recently launched mortgage range, including their fixed and tracker mortgages.

I suppose by doing that, they are really throwing their hat into the ring.

If they want to be a serious player in the market, I guess they don’t have any other option. With the Funding for Lending scheme working now, some extra £80bn of funding is available for banks to lend direct to consumers so it’s hardly surprising that competition has returned to the market. Also, without doubt, helping competitive pricing is the record low bank base rate agreed by the Bank of England’s Monetary Committee. And this is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future – possibly until well into 2014.

So good luck to Tesco Bank.  I hope it builds their market share because I really think it is healthy to have newcomers out there challenging the existing lender model.

However I do hope they have adjusted their rates within the parameters of a properly worked product pricing model. All too often I have seen lenders set their product pricing as a knee jerk reaction to what’s happening elsewhere within the market. As a generalisation, I think more thought needs to go into setting the headline rate – and not only that but the criteria sitting behind the rate plus the service standards supporting it. (It’s all well and good to have a market leading rate but do you have the back up team waiting to process the application?). And will it contribute to shareholder value?

When Home Funding Limited started originating for German Bank Westlb back in 2007 we had an innovative product pricing model which we actively looked to share with our broker partners. This enabled us to have a win/win scenario with our distributors as they were proactively involved in pricing the product. We were able to originate genuinely bespoke products which challenged the market but also enabled us, acting on behalf of the lender, to offer products which were profitable.

I believe that with the right model sitting behind you, there really is the opportunity for lenders to come up with products that build market share and that make money.