About Mortgage Metrics

First Quarter 2009

The OCC and OTS Mortgage Metrics Report presents key data on first lien residential mortgages serviced by national banks and thrifts, focusing on credit performance, loan modifications, payment plans, foreclosures, short sales, and deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure actions.  The OCC and OTS collect these data from the nine national banks and four thrifts⁸ that have the largest mortgage servicing portfolios among all national banks and thrifts.  As a result of mergers and acquisitions, these 13 depository institutions are now owned by nine holding companies.⁹   The data represent 64 percent of all first lien residential mortgages outstanding in the country.  More than 91 percent of the mortgages in the portfolio are serviced for third parties as a result of loan sales and securitization by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), the originating banks, and other financial institutions.  At the end of March 2009, the reporting institutions serviced more than 34 million first lien mortgage loans, totaling more than $6 trillion in outstanding balances.

The loans reflected in this report represent a large percentage of the overall mortgage industry, but they do not represent a statistically random sample of all mortgage loans.  The characteristics of these loans differ in notable ways from the overall population of mortgages.  This report does not attempt to quantify or adjust for known seasonal effects that occur within the mortgage industry.

In addition to providing information to the public, the data support the supervision of national bank and thrift mortgage practices.  For example, the data provide an additional tool to help examiners assess emerging trends, identify anomalies, compare servicers with peers, evaluate asset quality and loan loss reserve needs, and evaluate loss mitigation actions.

The report promotes a common reporting framework using standardized reporting terms and elements, which allow better comparisons across the industry and over time.  The report uses standardized definitions for prime, Alt-A, and subprime mortgages based on commonly used credit score ranges.

The OCC, OTS, and the participating institutions devoted significant resources to validating the data to ensure that the information is reliable and accurate.  Steps to ensure the validity of the data include comparisons with institutions' quarterly call and thrift financial reports and internal quality reviews conducted by the banks and thrifts as well as the external vendor who compiled the data.  Data sets of this size and scope inevitably suffer from a degree of inconsistency, missing data, and other imperfections.  This report notes cases in which data anomalies may have affected the results.  The OCC and OTS require prior data submissions to be adjusted as errors and omissions are detected.  In some cases, data presented in this report reflect resubmissions from institutions that restate and correct earlier information.

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