U.S. Residential Mortgage Servicer Assessment Action
New York, March 22, 2013 -- Moody's Investors Service has affirmed the Servicer Quality ("SQ") assessment
for Nationstar Mortgage LLC ("Nationstar") of SQ3+ as
a Master Servicer of residential mortgage loans. The assessment
is based on the company's strong reporting and remittance processes,
strong compliance and monitoring capabilities and below average servicing
stability.
ASSESSMENT RATIONALE
In a transaction that closed June 28, 2012, Nationstar Mortgage
LLC completed the acquisition of approximately $63.7 billion
in unpaid principal balance and certain other assets from Aurora Bank
FSB and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Aurora Loan Services
LLC, including the master servicing operations. Nationstar
purchased the entire Master Servicing division from Aurora, including
the people, processes, technology and files.
Nationstar's reporting and remittance processes are strong.
The company has continued to invest in the master servicing platform technology
through SBO 2000 system upgrades and its proprietary default data module
for default reporting. During the review period, Nationstar
implemented a monthly mortgage insurance loan level reconciliation process
which reduces the risk of mortgage insurance being cancelled in error
due to servicing transfers.
We view Nationstar's compliance and monitoring capabilities as strong.
Nationstar provided master servicing oversight for 40 primary servicers
as of February 2013. The company enhanced its servicer oversight
by increasing its loan level sampling by 5% and updated its annual
servicer audit materials to include single point of contact volumes and
statistics.
We view Nationstar's servicing stability as below average.
Moody's downgraded Nationstar Mortgage LLC's corporate family rating to
B2 from B1 during the review period. The master servicing unit
reports to the head of Nationstar Mortgage's primary servicing operations.
We would positively view a segregation of the master servicing unit from
the primary servicing organization.
The previous action for Nationstar SQ assessment occurred on September
7, 2012. At that time, we re-assigned the master
servicer assessment of Aurora Loan Services LLC to Nationstar and upgraded
the assessment to SQ3+ from SQ4+.
Moody's SQ assessments represent its view of a servicer's ability to prevent
or mitigate asset pool losses across changing markets. The assessment
scale ranges from SQ1 (strong) to SQ5 (weak). Where appropriate,
a "+" or "-" modifier will be appended to the relevant assessment
to indicate a servicer's relative servicing quality within a particular
category.
The methodologies used in this rating was "Moody's Approach to Rating
Residential Mortgage Servicers" published in January 2001 and "Moody's
Methodology for U.S. RMBS Master Servicer Quality Ratings"
published in April 2009. Please see the Credit Policy page on www.moodys.com
for a copy of these methodologies.
REGULATORY DISCLOSURES
For any affected securities or rated entities receiving direct credit
support from the primary entity(ies) of this rating action, and
whose ratings may change as a result of this rating action, the
associated regulatory disclosures will be those of the guarantor entity.
Exceptions to this approach exist for the following disclosures,
if applicable to jurisdiction: Ancillary Services, Disclosure
to rated entity, Disclosure from rated entity.
Please see Moody's Rating Symbols and Definitions on the Rating Process
page on www.moodys.com for further information on the meaning
of each rating category and the definition of default and recovery.
Please see ratings tab on the issuer/entity page on www.moodys.com
for the last rating action and the rating history. The date on
which some ratings were first released goes back to a time before Moody's
ratings were fully digitized and accurate data may not be available.
Consequently, Moody's provides a date that it believes is the most
reliable and accurate based on the information that is available to it.
Please see the ratings disclosure page on our website www.moodys.com
for further information.
Please see www.moodys.com for any updates on changes to
the lead rating analyst and to the Moody's legal entity that has issued
the rating.
Francis Wissman
Asst Vice President - Analyst
Structured Finance Group
Moody's Investors Service, Inc.
250 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10007
U.S.A.
JOURNALISTS: 212-553-0376
SUBSCRIBERS: 212-553-1653
William E Fricke
VP - Senior Credit Officer
Structured Finance Group
JOURNALISTS: 212-553-0376
SUBSCRIBERS: 212-553-1653
Releasing Office:
Moody's Investors Service, Inc.
250 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10007
U.S.A.
JOURNALISTS: 212-553-0376
SUBSCRIBERS: 212-553-1653
Moody's affirms Nationstar Mortgage's Master Servicer assessment