SPPL-fees -any help would be appreciated

[WILKINSS208]

Hi

I am claiming back Admin fees and Deeds release fees totalling £295.78

Has anyone dealt with Southern Pacific Personal Loans or CApstone Mortgage services as they are now.

Did you get your money back or am I wasting my time here.

thanks

s

[jotty]

Hi welcome to the site, please read my post as they will pay in the end you just have to ignore the threats and misinformation

 

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/mortgage-companies/104528-sppl-judgement-set-aside.html

[Helford]

Hi,

 

Just remember your agreement is STILL with SPPL, Capstone are only the servicing company. Same with Southern Pacific Mortgages Limited and Preferred Mortgages Limited.

[WILKINSS208]

SO when claiming I need to put SPPL on form instead of capstone

[midge61]

Hi

 

Yes SPML are who you took the contract out with capstone are just the gophers.

[gazebo]

Worth mentioning that SPML and SPPL are Lehman Brothers by another name.

[midge61]

Hi

 

But as the mortgages have been packaged up and sold on....and on....and on I don't know how we will be affected.

[gazebo]

I doubt if it will have much impact as the debt will be owned by somebody. If it's still owned by SPML or SPPL then it's likely to be sold to someone else pretty quickly as it's an asset with some value.

 

All this may actually be good news for SP customers. Having experienced their uniquely awful way of dealing with their customers, I find it hard to be believe that anyone could be any worse. And, I have to say that I didn't shed any tears this morning when I heard that Lehman staff in the UK probably won't get their September pay packets.

[midge61]

This is an article from 2006 but makes very interesting reading.

 

Real Estate: September 2006 | Volume19/No9

A whole new game

 

Whole loan sales have become an important part of the UK mortgage market, driven partly by increased investor demand for residential mortgage-backed securities and the entry of investment banks into the sector. Rachel Wolcott reports

Whole loan sales and trading has formed the backbone of the US mortgage market for years, with the first deals surfacing in the late 1940s. Until recently, it remained largely a US phenomenon - but that is now changing. Whole loan sales is gaining traction in the UK, as lenders seek to diversify their funding beyond securitisation and bank capital or, in the case of building societies, deposits.

Mortgage portfolio trading has been practised quietly in the UK among building societies for at least 20 years. Early deals were executed to diversify risk in building societies' mortgage books, as well as to increase their business. While building societies continue to be active buyers and sellers of mortgage portfolios through whole loan sales, newer entrants into the UK mortgage market - mainly investment banks and lenders with experience of US whole loans - are behind the recent burst of activity.

Whole loan sales involve the sale of a pool of loans from a mortgage lender to another institution, usually at a premium. This means originators can realise an immediate profit by selling the pool of loans at higher than face value. At the same time, lenders are able to free their balance sheets, creating capacity for new lending. Last year, as much as £20 billion of whole loan sales were completed in the UK, according to rating agency Standard & Poor's - and that figure is set to be eclipsed this year.

GMAC-RFC - a wholly owned subsidiary of Minneapolis-based Residential Capital Corporation, in turn part of General Motors Acceptance Corporation - is one of the largest traders of whole loan portfolios. The firm has been active in the UK market since 1998, and uses a blend of securitisation and whole loan sales for funding. "We have adopted our parental model in the US, which is a create-and-trade strategy," says Craig Beresford, director of asset sales at GMAC-RFC. "We've adapted that for the UK, where we originate the loans, and then we trade them out of the business to our partners in the rest of the world."

Whole loan sales also give lenders another way to manage risk. "Obviously, you retain some credit risk in a securitisation, but you also retain legal, origination, compliance and regulatory risk," says Beresford. "With whole loans, you don't. You sell all the risk. We have a good blend and a good method for managing the risk we retain on the balance sheet connected with the company."

GMAC-RFC is credited with leading growth in UK whole loan trading, bringing liquidity to the market and opening it up for other lenders. "GMAC and the proportion of assets it sells has helped boost the market," says Mark Wilten, group treasurer at London-based Kensington Group, a UK sub-prime mortgage lender. "Our growth in terms of what we sell has helped, as well as the growth in the overall breadth and depth of the investor base. The increased demand means the new non-lending financial institutions can come in and act as buyers."

Kensington last year originated £3.5 billion in new business and sold £740 million worth of mortgages to a mix of investment banks and building societies. This year, the lender has already sold £420 million of mortgages. Like GMAC-RFC, Kensington uses whole loan sales as part of its funding mix.

"We tend to sell the lower-yielding mortgages," says Wilten. "We find at the lower end of the adversity scale - the near-prime collateral - the cost of originating business is lower and the margins are lower, irrespective of the inherent risk within those loans. It's the lower end of the adversity scale that provides the best results in terms of selling collateral, and (there is) strong demand."

A couple of factors have accelerated the growth of the UK whole loan sales market. As well as GMAC's influence in pushing the market forward, there's been huge demand for residential mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from investors. That demand has prompted investment banks to seek out mortgage portfolios to buy and securitise. "The market has grown almost beyond recognition," says Beresford. "Kensington and some of the other larger building societies were able to step in and take advantage of the fact that there are a whole suite of potential investors crying out for assets and nobody had them to sell, so we stepped straight in there."

In 2001, GMAC-RFC sold £40 million worth of mortgages. That rose to £3.2 billion in 2005. This year, it has already sold more loans in the first half than it sold last year. Most recently, it sold a £250 million portfolio to Amber Homeloans, a North Yorkshire-based lender. This comprised a blended pool of prime, buy-to-let and self-certification products.

"There is strong demand to purchase assets," says Kensington's Wilten. "We see good bids for these portfolios. It's much more from an overall demand perspective that we see the real change in the dynamics and drivers of the market. It's the number of people out there and the volume of demand they have that's changed quite dramatically over the past two years."

Much of this demand for mortgage portfolios has come from investment banks entering the UK mortgage market through outright purchases of UK mortgage lenders, or through the creation of conduits that buy mortgages then securitise the loans. Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley have all acquired UK mortgage lenders over the past six years, mainly in the non-conforming sector of the market (Risk February 2006, pages 36-38). Non-conforming lenders provide mortgages to customers that traditional lenders tend to shy away from, such as those with impaired credit ratings.

One reason the UK mortgage market - and the rest of Europe - is so interesting to investment banks is that it represents an attractive way to generate returns as fee streams dwindle in their traditional businesses, such as plain vanilla securitisations. By buying UK lenders, US investment banks are able to get direct access to a steady stream of mortgage loans, which they can then securitise.

Lehman Brothers has been particularly active, having bought Southern Pacific Mortgages in 2002 and, more recently, London Mortgage Company in May this year. The US investment bank also owns Preferred Mortgages, and has established a shelf programme for European mortgages called Eurosail.

"We have a strong mortgage business globally," says Alex Maddox, managing director of structured finance trading at Lehman Brothers in London. "It's a fundamental part of our fixed-income business. We looked to replicate our US business in Europe and have been active in the UK."

Until recently, Lehman had been structuring stand-alone securitisation deals for its various lenders. Then, in May, it launched its first residential MBS deal from its Eurosail platform, a £735 million transaction called Eurosail 2006-1. This deal comprised non-conforming and near-prime mortgage assets originated by Southern Pacific Mortgages.

Eurosail deals will include assets from Lehman's other mortgage lenders, as well as loans the firm buys from the market. "We have good relationships with most UK mortgage providers," says Maddox. "We have been in whole loan trading for two and a half years now." Lehman also has a relationship with the Alliance & Leicester building society, providing it with non-conforming mortgage products for its clients. These could potentially be included in future Eurosail transactions.

However, not all investment banks are looking to buy non-conforming lenders - especially as most of them have been snapped up, and those remaining are seen as too expensive. Instead, these banks are buying assets in the whole loan market then securitising them in the capital markets to generate revenues.

In June, Credit Suisse launched its first securitisation through its Oakwood Homeloans business. It securitised a portfolio of mortgages it purchased from Kensington and GMAC-RFC in a £556 million deal called Alba 2006-1. ABN Amro is also entering the mortgage business, and establishing a conduit for consumer assets. "We've seen the competition in that area getting tougher and the fees going down," says Udo Van der Linden, executive director of consumer securitisation at ABN Amro in London. "Two and a half years ago, we launched a commercial MBS conduit, and that business has grown significantly. The new business we've started is the same principle for consumer assets with a focus on mortgages."

Whether all the new players will survive is another question. Interest in the UK mortgage market does not appear to be waning. However, the market is set to get even more crowded, with at least 10 new lenders looking at getting into what is, some say, an already over-supplied market.