Taxpayer Protections and Market Access for Mortgage Finance Act of 2017

Taxpayer Protections and Market Access for Mortgage Finance Act of 2017

This bill amends the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 to direct the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to establish guidelines requiring the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) to engage in significant, increasing, and varied credit-risk transfer transactions.

A "risk transfer transaction" provides for: (1) the sale, disposition, retention, or transfer within the private sector of credit risk on a one- to four-family residential mortgage loan or a pool of such loans that back securities on which the enterprise guarantees the timely payment of principal and interest; or (2) the retention by the private sector of any such credit risk in connection with the sale of any such loan or security to an enterprise.

The enterprises may set and publish guarantee fees commensurate with the reduced credit risk resulting from any new risk transfer transactions. The bill exempts certain swaps entered into for the purpose of transferring or sharing credit risk in connection with a risk transfer transaction from the Commodity Exchange Act.

The FHFA must also require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to establish: (1) a five-year pilot program under which each enterprise must annually engage in at least one front-end risk transfer transaction in which at least 75% of the transferred credit risk is transferred to bank or non-bank mortgage originators having under $10 billion in assets, and (2) a pilot program to increase the amount of risk that is shared by the enterprises using private mortgage insurance.