Session 15: Fixed Income: Structured Securities Reading 57: Mortgage-Backed Sector of the Bond Market
LOS h: Distinguish among the sequential pay tranche, the accrual tranche, the planned amortization class tranche, and the support tranche in a CMO.
$400 million of mortgage pass-throughs will be used as collateral for five tranches. The first two tranches are planned amortization tranches?$260 million of bonds of tranche U and $50 million of bonds of tranche V. Tranche U is a planned amortization class (PAC) I tranche and tranche V is a scheduled tranche. The third tranche is a scheduled support tranche—the holders of the $40 million of bonds in tranche W receive principal repayments according to a schedule as long as prepayment speed is between 190 and 240 PSA. The last two tranches are unscheduled floating-rate support tranches: $25 million of X bonds and $25 million of Y bonds. Which of the following statements regarding the prepayment risk of the bonds is most accurate? The:
A) |
U bonds have less prepayment risk than the V bonds, which have less prepayment risk than the Y bonds. | |
B) |
W bonds have less prepayment risk than the X bonds, which have less prepayment risk than the Y bonds. | |
C) |
W bonds have less prepayment risk than the U bonds, which have less prepayment risk than the Y bonds. | |
Even though U and V are sequential pay tranches, they are also PACs. Once the PSA rate is exceeded by the tranche collars the support tranches absorb all the prepayment risk first and then the prepayment risk is absorbed by the tranches in reverse order with the lower unscheduled tranches absorbing more prepayment risk before the higher scheduled tranches. Therefore tranche V would have more prepayment risk than tranche U. Support tranches X and Y have the greatest prepayment risk because they are unscheduled and lowest in the order of tranches; there is not enough information given to know which has higher prepayment risk. Tranche W will have less prepayment risk than X and Y, but more prepayment risk than V and U. Prepayment risk for PACs is highest at the lower tranches and lowest at the upper tranches. |