OCC and OTS Mortgage Metrics Report

Overview

The OCC and OTS Mortgage Metrics Report presents key performance data on first lien residential mortgages serviced by national banks and thrifts, focusing on 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 five thrifts that have the largest mortgage servicing portfolios among all national banks and thrifts. The data represent more than 60 percent of all mortgages outstanding. Approximately 88 percent of the mortgages in the portfolio are held by third parties as a result of loan sales and securitization by government-sponsored enterprises, the originating banks, and other financial institutions. At the end of September 2008, these institutions serviced more than 34.6 million first lien mortgage loans, totaling $6.1 trillion in outstanding balances.

The report is based on a data collection process covering 68 data elements for each of the mortgages in the portfolio from January through September 2008. The OCC and OTS use a data vendor to aggregate, validate, store, and generate reports, but the agencies retain ownership and control of the data.

In addition to providing important information to the public, the data support the supervision of national bank and thrift mortgage practices. The report provides an additional tool to help examiners assess emerging trends, identify anomalies, compare a lender with the rest of the industry, evaluate asset quality and loan loss reserve needs, and evaluate loss mitigation actions.

The portfolio of loans serviced by these banks and thrifts does 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. Additionally, there are known seasonal effects in mortgage lending. This report does not attempt to quantify or adjust for those seasonal effects.

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