The risk of risk retention

On March 29, federal regulators proposed a rule governing how lenders would retain the risk on loans sold to the secondary market. The agencies were directed to create the rule under Section 941 of the Dodd-Frank Act as a way to balance out the mortgage finance system. The thinking was that if lenders held the risk on the loans, rather than unloading them onto securitizers and their investors, more care would be given to how loans are written and who gets them. It’s the most anticipated and one of the most heavily lobbied-against rules to come out of the reform.