Welcome to The S-Curve
Now you will be able to receive the latest announcements, product updates, and our insights on the mortgage market in real time.
The name of the blog, the S-Curve, is a reflection of our logo and the central feature of our prepayment model. S-curves are seen in nature in many phenomenon, from population growth to prepayment and default models. Our first S-curve, in the early 1990s, used the arctangent function, then piece-wise linear functions, and evolved over time to be more complex and vary by FICO, loan size and LTV. This evolution encapsulates both the timeless nature of fundamental relationships and constant innovation to describe them better over time.
We hope you find the information useful and we look forward to your feedback.
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Day of Service 2025EventsThe Andrew Davidson & Co., Inc. (AD&Co) DEI Day of Service 2025 provided the opportunity to have fun and support the greater NYC community at the same time. Hosted by the AD&Co DEI Committee, we first gathered at the AD&Co office to prepare backpacks for unhoused students in support of Volunteers of America® Greater New York’s Operation Backpack®. Essential school supplies are being distributed to Elementary, Middle, and High School students. This volunteer activity aligns closely with the AD&Co values of continuous learning and education, and I feel confident that this donation of school supplies will be impactful to these young students.
On to lunch, Jing Fong “has been a New York institution since 1978, specializing in dim sum and Cantonese cuisine.” But what is Dim Sum? As advised by blogger Justine Pang, “Dim sum is a Chinese cuisine, taken from the teahouse culture in Hong Kong and Guangdong Province; in which consist of small plates of Chinese food paired with a hot cup of tea, and accompanied with family and friends.” At one time, Jing Fong occupied a space with 800 seat capacity. The center of the table was filled with fresh, delicious food, and it spins on a lazy susan to allow for easy sharing.
The last stop of the day was to the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). The museum specializes in collecting practical, everyday items that reflect ordinary life, and the magazine exhibit was especially interesting.
The Herbalist
“In the early days of Chinese medicine in America, Chinese treatment for certain ailments was more effective than Western treatments and didn’t have side effects” - MOCA The Laundry
Laundry businesses have historically provided a stable and reliable income for many Chinese immigrants who faced exclusion and racism from many other industries. The World of Magazines
“Through magazine publishing, a vital form of mass media in the 1990s, Asian Americans editorialized issues central to their lives and depicted themselves in ways that were unimaginable before. Magazine Fever presents stories of Generation X magazines–how they were founded and sustained; how they captured the essence of multiculturalism and Generation X paradigms, and how they impacted the ways Asian American identity is understood today.” - MOCA It was great to experience Chinatown in Manhattan via food, history, and culture. I had the opportunity to purchase two books at MOCA and will follow both MOCA and Jing Fong on social media to continue to support future events!
The S-Curve Archives
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ThoughtsIn our January 19th blog entitled, A More Equitable Lending System Will Not Be Created by Accident, we described the efforts it will take to overcome not just bias in lending today, but the systemic factors that have limited access to credit in the past and have created an unjust system.
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ThoughtsIn this short blog post I discuss some developments taking place in the flood insurance landscape in the US and look ahead at a few potential directions things could go. I suggest that universal catastrophic flood insurance coverage with a continuation of the introduction of risk-based pricing would be a significant improvement.
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ThoughtsIntroduction
The Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) entered conservatorship in September 2008. One could view the succeeding thirteen years as a journey back to financial stability with a refined operating model that looks more like a financial utility than a hedge fund. This business model is more compatible with a fair lending mission for a standard-setter that maintains secondary markets under an effective regulator. The GSEs remain the largest part of the housing finance backbone and a resilient funding source during economic stress.
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Thoughts
Around 75% of white American families were homeowners in the first quarter of 2020, according to data from the United States Census Bureau. However, only 44% of Black American families owned their homes at the same time.
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Thoughts
According to a report by the Research Institute for Housing America, climate change risk is rapidly increasing in the housing industry and will continue to demand more attention and regulation in the near future.
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Thoughts
Mortgage market participants are keenly aware that the Federal Reserve has been scaling back its UST and MBS purchases and factoring the outcomes of its actions on stakeholders across markets.
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Thoughts
The growing prevalence of artificial intelligence in the mortgage industry is shining a new light on the human biases that have pervaded the industry since its inception. AI is meant to bring fairness and objectivity to mortgage decisions, but it can’t perform fairly if it was built on an unfair system.
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Products
The LDM v3.0.2 library adds AutoLDM to the v3.0.1 library.
Key benefits include:
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EventsWe at Andrew Davidson & Co., Inc. (AD&Co) are once again thrilled to celebrate Pride Month, especially the contributions of LGBTQ professionals in the field of finance including affordable housing policy and the GSEs. This year, in addition to celebrating, we are also paying increased attention to the challenges that LGBTQ individuals face, particularly around issues of housing. Our pride in our LGBTQ staff and community sits alongside our concern about discriminatory lending practices, including in mortgages. As of February 2021, for the first time, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) Americans will be protected from housing discrimination under the Fair Housing Act.
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News
For several years, AD&Co has tracked the total rate of return (TRR) performance of the GSE CAS and STACR CRT in its U.S. Mortgage High-Yield Indices. The AD&Co Mid-Tier index constitutes a broad market measure of the TRR performance of GSE CRT. The related sub-indices segregate the CRT market into 4 index Tiers by attachment point, reflective of the credit exposure of the various classes of underlying CRT ranging from B to M1.