Secondary Market

Performance on vintage prime residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) continues to degrade, Fitch Ratings revealed in a report.

Nichole Guthneck will help to lead Guaranteed Home Mortgage Company as its newly-appointed division leader, the company announced. In her role at Guaranteed, Guthneck is responsible for training, hiring, oversight, marketing, and policy for Guaranteed Direct, the firm's web-based residential mortgage platform.

Tree.com, Inc., and LendingTree, LLC, are welcoming a new senior leader to their ranks. The entities recently announced that Nikul Patel has been appointed as senior vice president of products.

Commercial mortgage-backed security (CMBS) delinquencies have posted substantial declines over the past two months, according to Trepp.

Ocwen will buy the Dallas-based servicer and originator from private equity firm WL Ross & Co. The breakdown for the transaction includes $588 million in cash and $162 million in Ocwen convertible preferred stock. Atlanta-based Ocwen won't need to raise additional equity capital to complete the transaction.

Radian Guaranty, Inc., a private mortgage insurer and subsidiary of the Radian Group, announced it will reward current insured borrowers through the Responsible Homeowner Reward program, which is administered by Loan Value Group LLC, a company founded in 2008 to provide borrower incentives to protect investors and servicers.

Missouri-based Mortgage Returns is celebrating a strong 2012 thus far, recently revealing that the company's revenue has grown significantly since January. The database management and automated marketing services provider has reported a 50 percent uptick in revenue since the start of the year.

The settlement struck between the nation's five largest mortgage servicers and the U.S. Department of Justice and 49 state attorneys general calls for reforming mortgage servicing practices with the implementation of more than 300 standards. As described by the attorneys general's own negotiating committee, the banks must "accomplish a massive undertaking" to put all the servicing standards into practice as ordered under the agreement. They were given 180 days.

Responding to Moody's Investors Service Inc.'s decision to extend the review period for potential downgrades for portions of the company's debt, Genworth Financial, Inc., has issued an official statement on the pending evaluations. Noting that Genworth is proceeding with urgency in its dealings with Moody's, the company expressed confidence in the outcome of the review process.

Wall Street took notice as the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) Working Group fired its first shot against a major financial institution.