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LOS e, (Part 1): Describe the cash flow and prepayment characteristics for securities backed by home equity loans, manufactured housing loans, and automobile loans.
Q1. Which of the following is TRUE for securities backed by closed-end home equity loans?
A) Prepayments are not allowed.
B) The prepayment benchmark is issuer specific.
C) The securities in those deals are typically floating-rate tranches.
Q2. In a passthrough structure, the principal cash flow from the credit card accounts are:
A) amoritized without penalty.
B) never paid due to interest rate charges.
C) paid to security holders on a pro rata basis.
Q3. Financial consultant George Price advises high-net-worth individuals on income investments. His firm, Price Enterprises, specializes in asset-backed securities (ABS). Price’s son-in-law, Roger Camby, also works for the firm. Price and Camby do not get along well, and they often engage in heated arguments in the office.
On a certain morning, Price and Camby are arguing about which asset-backed securities (ABS) to purchase. Over the last two weeks, Price Enterprises signed up a half-dozen new clients and received several million in new funds from existing clients, and the company needs some new ideas for the portfolios.
Camby is excided about a new ABS issued by a large retailer, Glendo’s. The ABS reflects a bundle of nonamortizing consumer credit accounts. As usual, Price prefers a different option, in this case a new collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO) issued by Trident Mortgage. Both securities offer similar total return potential and seem reasonably valued. Both Camby and Price believe the other analyst’s preferred securities are too risky.
Unable to come to an agreement about which ABS to purchase, Camby and Price return to an old topic of discussion, the merits of collateralized debt obligations, (CDOs). Both analysts agree on the benefits of CDOs, which allow investors to profit off the spread between return on collateral and the cost of funding. But they disagree on the best strategy for constructing a CDO. Price prefers a simple cash CDO and criticizes Camby for his preference for more complicated synthetic securities. Camby argues that synthetic CDOs offer several advantages over cash CDOs:
- It is cheaper to purchase exposure to an asset through a swap than to purchase the asset directly.
- Only the senior section must be funded.
- It takes less time to assemble the portfolio.
- A bank can use a synthetic CDO to take debt off the balance sheet without the consent of borrowers.
Bindle Bonds, a consultancy that sets up payment structures for entities that wish to issue asset-backed securities, has a referral relationship with Price Enterprises. Just before lunch, Bindle sales director Marty Malkin calls Price to offer him a piece of a new ABS comprised of thousands of home-improvement loans. Price likes the interest rates and the senior/subordinated structure that contains several junior tranches and senior tranches. But during his analysis of the default and prepayment projections, Price becomes concerned that Bindle is underestimating the risks. In response to Price’s concerns, Malkin explains that the ABS has a shifting-interest mechanism designed to limit risk for the senior tranches.
After Price agrees to invest in the new Bindle ABS, he and Camby go to lunch. As they wait for their food, they discuss an investment a colleague pitched to Camby that morning. The ABS issuer used a conditional prepayment rate to estimate prepayment risks. According to the issuer’s model, repayment risks are modest, in part because refinancing is not a major concern with the underlying securities. The underlying securities are fixed-rate loans, and their default risk is fairly high. One benefit of the securities is the fact that principal payments are immediately passed on to investors.
Immediately after Price and Camby return from lunch, Kay Peterson, a longtime client of Price Enterprises, comes into the office interested in diversifying her portfolio by purchasing European securities. Price is not a fan of the European market and tries to dissuade Peterson, who he knows prefers MBS. He makes the following arguments:
- The U.S. MBS market has delivered stronger growth than the European market.
- Mortgage loans need not be marked to market in the U.S.
- Standardized credit-scoring systems in the U.S. make it easier for lenders to assess risk.
Camby, however, disagrees with his father-in-law. He suggests that Peterson invest in Europe, citing two advantages:
- Europeans are more likely to own their homes than Americans.
- In Europe, mortgage debt represents a smaller portion of gross domestic product (GDP) than it does in the U.S.
Peterson is not sure which of the men is correct, and she asks for more details about the European market. Price explains that spotty data on mortgage loans hinders growth in the European market, adding that at times data presentation is inconsistent even in different parts of the same country. New valuation models are becoming more sophisticated, Camby added, postulating that as such models come into wider use in Europe, the region will see higher growth.
What affect will the shifting-interest mechanism connected to the ABS backed by home-improvement loans have on the senior tranches?
Credit Risk? Payment Risk?
A) Reduce Increase
B) Increase Reduce
C) Reduce Reduce
Q4. The ABS Price and Camby discussion at lunch is most likely backed by:
A) auto loans.
B) Small Business Administration (SBA) loans.
C) home-equity loans.
Q5. With regard to statements made by Price and Camby to Peterson regarding the characteristics of the European and U.S. MBS market:
A) only one is correct.
B) both are correct.
C) both are incorrect.
Q6. Which of Camby’s statements about the advantage of synthetic CDOs is least accurate?
A) Only the senior section must be funded.
B) A bank can use a synthetic CDO to take debt off the balance sheet without the consent of borrowers.
C) It is cheaper to purchase exposure to an asset through a swap than to purchase the asset directly.
Q7. Camby’s preference for Glendo’s bonds suggests he is most likely concerned about:
A) prepayment risk.
B) credit risk.
C) interest-rate risk.
Q8. To further advance his case in favor of the U.S. MBS market relative to the European market, Price’s most accurate argument is:
A) the illiquidity of the market for securitized loans.
B) the fact that most European mortgage debt is funded through retail deposits.
C) how a shortage of mortgage-servicing firms is slowing growth.
Q9. The measure of prepayments associated with securities backed by auto loans is called:
A) auto-backed prepayments.
B) collateralized prepayment speed.
C) absolute prepayment speed.
Q10. Relative to mortgage-backed securities and home equity loan-backed assets, prepayments for manufactured housing-backed securities are:
A) more significant because the underlying loans are more sensitive to refinancing.
B) equally as significant.
C) less significant because the underlying loans are not as sensitive to refinancing.
Q11. How is the principal retired when an early amortization provision is triggered? It is retired by:
A) maturing credit card receivable-backed securities immediately.
B) paying credit card borrowers' principal payments directly to investors without using them to purchase more receivables.
C) reinvesting credit card borrowers' principal payments in receivables.
Q12. A closed-end home equity loan (HEL) is a secondary mortgage that is structured like:
A) a variable rate, amortizing loan.
B) a standard balloon payment loan.
C) a standard, fixed-rate, fully amortizing loan.
Q13. Prepayments are more stable for manufactured housing-backed securities (HBS) because:
A) manufactured housing securities have very high interest rates.
B) borrowers are not sensitive to refinancing since they have few alternative financing sources.
C) manufactured housing loans are too large to be marketed separately.
Q14. Prepayments for manufactured housing-backed securities are less significant because the underlying loans are not as sensitive to refinancing. This is true for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
A) loan balances are usually small, reducing the savings resulting from refinancing.
B) depreciation of mobile homes in the early years can cause the loan outstanding to be greater than the value of the asset.
C) often borrowers are using Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) loans, which prohibit refinancing.
Q15. A home equity loan (HEL) is a loan backed by residential property. Which of the following generally does NOT describe a HEL?
A) The loan often does not meet agency requirements for a qualified loan.
B) It is frequently a first lien on property owned by a borrower with a marginal credit history.
C) It is frequently a first lien on property owned by a borrower with an excellent credit history. | 
发表于 2009-3-26 10:08
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