Sector developments and company hires

LendInvest expands financing syndicate
Wells Fargo has joined LendInvest’s £200m financing syndicate with NAB to support the continued growth of the lender’s buy-to-let proposition. Wells Fargo joins a growing roster of global financial institutions choosing to support LendInvest's mortgage products, including banks such as Lloyds, JPMorgan, HSBC, Barclays and Citi.

Established five years ago, LendInvest was the first fintech to provide an entirely online experience for BTL customers and was the first UK fintech to securitise its own mortgage assets just 18 months later. The platform now has more than £3.6bn in funds under management, having entered the residential mortgage market in March, with the launch of a range of products aimed at homeowners with more complex sources of income that are currently underserved by incumbent lenders.

In other news…

Fourth CIRT, third CAS print
Fannie Mae has completed its fourth CIRT reinsurance transaction of the year, transferring US$501.6m of mortgage risk to the insurance market. There were 21 insurance and reinsurance companies involved in CIRT 2023-4, covering 390bp of loss on the pool up to a limit of US$501.6m if the first 105bp - or US$135m - first loss layer is breached. The transaction covers a pool of 40,000 single-family loans with an unpaid principal balance of US$12.9bn.

The GSE yesterday printed CAS 2023-R03 at US$622m, its third capital markets CRT deal of the year. The US$342.6m M1 tranche was priced to yield 250bp over SOFR and was rated Baa2/A-, the US$216.4m M2 tranche yields SOFR plus 390bp and is rated Baa3/BBB+ and the US$62.6m B1 tranche yields SOFR plus 635bp and is rated Ba3/BBB-.

Nomura was the lead manager and Morgan Stanley the co-lead on the transaction. The co-managers were BofA, Cantor Fitzgerald, StoneX and Wells Fargo.

It is usual for a CIRT deal to be executed at the same time as a CAS deal, but this year Fannie Mae has executed one less CAS trade than CIRT transactions. This is in keeping with the trend of the last couple of years to cover an increasing proportion of MBS risk in the reinsurance industry, as costs have remained more stable in this sector.