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Bozic-isms

Boris-BozicMerix Financial’s always observant CEO Boris Bozic could have a PhD in mortgage industry analysis, if there were such a thing. Last Thursday he appeared on Canadian Mortgage Hangout. Here were 10 of his notable quotables from that webcast.

  1. “When you have regulators that threaten ‘interest rates are going up’ (for multiple years)…eventually the consumer says ‘enough already’”
  2. “The only statistic that I really look at is the employment number…If people are working, they can make their payments.”
  3. “The monolines play a critical role…in terms of offering (consumer) choice…And it’s only now that the government is realizing that.”
  4. Monoline lenders will represent about “$23 billion in volume” in the brokerage space in 2013.
  5. The recent drop in market share for monolines is a “direct reflection to the limitations on conventional mortgages today…The banks have been able to benefit from a number of those changes.”
  6. “…An issue for all of our monoline lenders…is the availability of conventional financing, because of the restrictions and the cap on bulk insurance.”
  7. “…The tone and the tenor coming out of Ottawa is that the government is looking to scale back the ‘risk’ (i.e., the sovereign guarantee on insured mortgages) for Canadian taxpayers.”
  8. Regarding the bad wrap on bulk insurance: “Wouldn’t’ you rather have the sovereign guarantee on a 70% LTV (mortgage) versus the 95%’er?”
  9. “One of the things we should be considering [is that a] 95% mortgage should be priced differently than a 70% LTV.”
    (CMT Note: For a while now, many lenders have been offering cheaper rates on insured mortgages with 5% down, than those with 20-30% down. And it’s not by choice. It reflects the reality of what’s available in today’s funding market.)
  10. “It would be beneficial…if we went back to a risk-based pricing”.

Rob McLister, CMT