Fannie Mae Prices Inaugural Connecticut Avenue Securities (CAS) REMIC Deal

Landmark $922 Million Transaction Marks Major Innovation in Benchmark Credit Risk Transfer Program

Aleksandrs Rozens
202-752-7916

WASHINGTON, DC – Fannie Mae (FNMA/OTC) priced the first benchmark Credit Risk Transfer transaction utilizing a REMIC structure, leading the market in product innovation. CAS Series 2018-R07 is a $922 million note offering that represents Fannie Mae's inaugural CAS REMIC^™ transaction. This is the seventh and final credit-risk sharing transaction of 2018 under the Connecticut Avenue Securities^® (CAS) program. CAS is Fannie Mae's benchmark issuance program designed to share credit risk on its single-family conventional guaranty book of business.

Fannie Mae's CAS program is the most actively traded credit-risk transfer product in the market and the new CAS REMIC structure marks the continued evolution of the CAS program. Enhancements to the program allow CAS notes to be issued as REMICs, advancing Fannie Mae’s goal to support the long-term growth of the program by making the product more attractive to market participants, including real estate investment trust (REIT) investors and international investors. Going forward, all CAS offerings will be issued as CAS REMICs.

"With this milestone offering, Fannie Mae has enhanced the CAS program in a way that makes it more attractive to a broader range of investors over the long run," said Laurel Davis, Vice President for Credit Risk Transfer, Fannie Mae. "It marks our latest and the most substantial innovation in five years of progress to reduce risks to U.S. taxpayers in the secondary mortgage market and deepen the sources of sustainable liquidity for U.S. mortgage lenders. We expect to return to the market with this new structure in early 2019."

The reference pool for CAS Series 2018-R07 consists of more than 98,000 single-family mortgage loans with an outstanding unpaid principal balance of approximately $24.3 billion. The reference pool will include one group of loans compromised of collateral with loan-to-value ratios of 60.01 percent to 80.00 percent acquired from April through June 2018. The loans included in this transaction are fixed-rate, generally 30-year term, fully amortizing mortgages and were underwritten using rigorous credit standards and enhanced risk controls.

Fannie Mae will retain a portion of the 1M-1, 1M-2, and 1B-1 tranches in order to align its interests with investors throughout the life of the deal. Fannie Mae will retain the full 1B-2H and 1A-H tranches.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch ("BofA Merrill Lynch") is the lead structuring manager and joint bookrunner and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC ("J.P. Morgan") is the co-lead manager and joint bookrunner. Co-managers are Barclays Capital Inc. ("Barclays"), BNP Paribas Securities Corp. ("BNP"), Citigroup Global Markets Inc. ("Citigroup") and Nomura Securities International ("Nomura"). Selling group members are Loop Capital Markets LLC and Siebert Cisneros Shank & Co.

With the completion of this transaction, Fannie Mae will have brought 30 CAS deals to market since the program began, issued $36 billion in notes, and transferred a portion of the credit risk to private investors on over $1 trillion in single-family mortgage loans as part of the CAS program. Since 2013, Fannie Mae has transferred a portion of the credit risk on approximately $1.6 trillion in single-family mortgages through all of its risk transfer programs.

This will be Fannie Mae's final transaction of 2018.

Fannie Mae's deliberate issuer strategy works to build the CAS program in a sustainable way to promote liquidity and to build a broad and diverse investor base. To promote transparency and to help investors evaluate our program, Fannie Mae provides ongoing robust disclosure data to help credit investors evaluate the program, as well as access to news, resources, and analytics through its credit risk sharing webpages. This includes Fannie Mae's innovative Data Dynamics^® tool, which enables market participants to analyze CAS deals that are currently outstanding.

In addition to our flagship CAS program, Fannie Mae continues to reduce risk to taxpayers through its Credit Insurance Risk Transfer^™ (CIRT^™) reinsurance program and other forms of risk transfer.

About Connecticut Avenue Securities
CAS REMIC notes are issued by a bankruptcy-remote trust. The amount of periodic principal and ultimate principal paid by Fannie Mae is determined by the performance of a large and diverse reference pool. For more information on individual CAS transactions and Fannie Mae's approach to credit risk transfer, visit our credit risk sharing website.