Publications
Uniform Practices For the Clearance and Settlement of Mortgage-Backed Securities and Other Related Securities
SIFMA's comprehensive Uniform Practices Manual is considered by many to be the industry standard. These are trading, clearance and settlement guidelines representing common industry practice, providing the information you need in one place.
With the help of a team of industry experts, we developed the Uniform Practices for the Clearance and Settlement of Mortgage-Backed Securities and Other Related Securities and first published them in 1981. These guidelines were written to provide a common understanding of the terms and conditions for confirming, comparing and settling mortgage and other related securities. The current Manual represents a comprehensive revision and consolidation of all the guidelines since their original issuance. They are continually updated and expanded to reflect the growth and development of the mortgage and asset-backed securities industry.
In brief, the Manual includes the following:
- confirmation and notification requirements;
- "good delivery" guidelines for Ginnie Maes, Fannie Maes, Freddie Macs;
- monthly notification and settlement schedules;
- information relating to structured products such as CMOs, stripped mortgage securities and asset-backed securities;
- buy-in procedures;
- information relating to U.S. federal housing agency programs;
- information relating to depositories for mortgage and asset-backed securities;
- and more.
Also, from the beginning, the Mortgage and Asset-Backed Securities Division of the Association saw the importance of consistency in the many calculations necessary for analyzing, modeling and evaluating mortgage and asset-backed securities. The Bond Market Association Standard Prepayment Model was developed in 1985, and has since become an industry standard for expressing rates of prepayments on mortgage securities. Similar efforts followed to codify the many assumptions and formulas then in use, and culminated in the publishing of the first Standard Formulas guidelines in 1990 by the Association's Mortgage Securities Research Committee.
A full chapter is devoted to Standard Formulas, with information on settlement-based calculations, prepayment models, default analysis, yield and yield-related measures, accrual instrument calculations, day-count standards, as well as age and coupon assumptions for generic pools.
Monitored by our in-house Director of Mortgage Market Practices, who works closely with the Uniform Practices Subcommittee--comprised of top professionals in the MBS market--this useful Manual comes to you as an annual subscription. It is updated continuously with notification and settlement dates, plus many other new developments or changes affecting trading, clearance and settlement practices, as soon as they occur.
The Manual is available in two formats: a traditional 3-ring binder version, for which you receive monthly, or more frequent, updates by mail; and an electronic version accessible from our Web site. The content and layout is identical between the two formats. You can choose to supplement one with the other at a deep discount.
If you have a number of people who will be referring to the Manual frequently, consider buying multiple copies to place strategically on workstations around your office, or a site license of the electronic version. This arrangement allows an unlimited number of users at your firm to download copies, or use them from a central server location. And please note that, after the first year, there is a substantial reduction in the renewal price for multiple subscriptions from the same firm.
Member Prices:$475.00, 2/$850.00
Non-Member Prices:$550.00, 2/$1,050.00
