Beginning with transactions that close on or after May 1, 2008, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services requests that issuers of U.S. residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) send us monthly performance data customarily sent to trustees and other third parties and include a representations and warranty that all loan variables and performance data fields sent to us at the time we assign our rating and monthly for the transaction's life are true and correct.
Provision And Data Submission Details
To conform to this request, this provision would provide for:
The loan-level performance data to be submitted monthly to Standard & Poor's in an electronic file;
The loan-level performance data will contain data fields customarily sent to trustees or third-party U.S. RMBS data collection vendors;
If there is a single servicer, that servicer (and any successor servicer) will be responsible for providing the monthly performance data; and
If there are multiple servicers, the master servicer (and any successor master servicer) will be responsible for providing the monthly performance data.
Monthly data can be sent in any existing commercial electronic file format, including, but not limited to, .doc, .xls, .csv, .txt, and .dat., and include any data fields currently transmitted to trustees and other third parties.
We will provide each servicer with individual login credentials to a file transfer protocol (FTP) server and request that each servicer use the server to maximize efficiency. If the FTP server is inaccessible, Standard & Poor's will attempt to notify the party previously designated by the respective servicer.
Please direct any inquires pertaining to delivery specifications to gail_houston@standardandpoors.com.
Loan-Level Performance Data Will Enhance Surveillance And Strengthen Our Ratings Process
By receiving ongoing collateral attributes and performance data, we plan to develop a loan-level approach to surveilling outstanding U.S. RMBS ratings and move forward with efforts to conduct more granular analysis of the factors influencing borrower behavior in the residential mortgage market. The additional data may also help identify patterns and trends in the market, enhance our surveillance of outstanding transactions, and help us provide additional insightful research to the mortgage and securitization markets. The provision of regular loan-level performance data transmitted to Standard & Poor's for rated U.S. RMBS transactions expands on its existing practice in Europe and Australia.
On Feb. 7, 2008, Standard & Poor's announced a series of broad measures intended to enhance its governance, analytics, information dissemination, and investor education to strengthen its ratings process (see Related Research). In this article, Standard & Poor's stated that it will take actions to improve its surveillance process through strengthened surveillance functions, improve timeliness and effectiveness of its surveillance process through the addition of improved surveillance tools, and work with market participants to improve disclosure of collateral underlying structured securities. The collection and dissemination of loan-level data is also consistent with extensive market feedback, which indicates a desire for more transparency on outstanding transactions and more insight into developing markets. We're also actively engaged with market participants to potentially develop an industry standard reporting package of loan-level data and have offered the Standard & Poor's glossary of terms for residential mortgage data transmittal as the starting point for industry efforts to develop standard definitions and terms (see Related Research). Market feedback confirms this effort to be an important step in improving data quality in the U.S. RMBS sector.
Related Research
The following articles are available on RatingsDirect. The criteria articles are also available on Standard & Poor's Web site at www.standardandpoors.com. In the left navigation bar, select Ratings and then Policies, Criteria & Definitions. The reports are located under the Requests for Comment tab.
"Criteria: Summary Of Findings And Response To Request For Comment On Providing U.S. RMBS Monthly Loan-Level Performance Data To Standard & Poor?s," published Jan. 31, 2008;
"Criteria: Request For Comment: Additional Loan-Level Fields Requested For New U.S. RMBS Ratings," published Feb. 1, 2008;
"Special Report: Strengthening The Ratings Process," published Feb. 7, 2008; and
"Glossary Of Terms For Requested Additional Loan-Level Fields For New U.S. RMBS Ratings," published April 2, 2008.
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