The S-Curve

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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Blog - Latest
  • AD&Conversations: Trends in the Home Equity Sector

    Rob Landauer, Abe Martin

    Podcast

    Join Rob Landauer in a conversation with Abe Martin as they discuss his recent Pipeline article, "Modeling the Balance Behavior of HELOC Borrowers." In this episode, they highlight key points from the article as he shares insights into the draw component of HELOCs and provide an update on the beta release of our much-anticipated industry HELOC model.

  • Industry Leaders in Fixed-Income Analytics, Kelli Sayres and Gene Park, join Andrew Davidson & Co., Inc. 

    Ashlea Bonds

    News

    We’re excited to announce a major addition to the Andrew Davidson & Co., Inc. (AD&Co) team. Industry leaders Kelli Sayres and Gene Park, known for building and scaling leading fixed-income analytics platforms, have joined AD&Co’s Business Development team. With decades of experience, deep client partnerships, and a shared commitment to rigorous quantitative analytics, their arrival marks an exciting new chapter for our firm and the clients we serve.

    Read the full press release to learn more about their backgrounds, recent work at Numerix, formerly known as PolyPaths and what this means for AD&Co.

    READ NOW 

     

  • White Paper: Evaluating GSE Servicing Rights With Extended Consumer Credit Data: Valuation and Sensitivity Analysis

    Sanjeeban Chatterjee, Vivian Li, Joni Baker, Richard Cooperstein

    Thoughts

    Building on our earlier research on expanded consumer attributes, AD&Co continues to explore how credit data contributes to modeling delinquency and prepayment risk, which are key drivers of mortgage servicing rights cash flows and valuation.

    Our latest analysis shows that while modern credit scores capture important borrower behavior, there is still meaningful explanatory power beyond any single score. Across 2,000+ consumer attributes, additional variables provide incremental insight into loan performance and mortgage servicing rights valuation dynamics.

    Read Now

  • Andrew Davidson Featured on the One On One with Greg Sher

    Joann Gollette

    Events

    Andrew Davidson recently joined NFM Lending’s Greg Sher on the One On One podcast to discuss our recent white paper, “The Impact of Moving Away From the Tri-Merge Standard.”

    In the conversation, Andrew shares insights on the evolving credit score landscape and what these changes could mean for mortgage modeling and risk assessment.

    You can listen to the full discussion here:

  • Impressions from SFVegas and OB Summit 2026

    Eknath Belbase, Daniel Swanson, Yvonne Chen

    Events

    AD&Co recently sponsored and attended SFVegas 2026 and Optimal Blue Summit 2026. This post shares the AD&Co team's unique perspectives and key takeaways from attending both conferences.

    The New Non-Agency Model, Real Estate Exposure to Climate-Related Hazards & Escrow Analysis (Eknath Belbase)

    Daniel and I recorded a Exchange Live: Tech Odyssey podcast on Kinetics and the upcoming release of LDM v4.0. The 30-minute audio and accompanying slides are available on demand. We focused on DSCR/prepay penalty, along with the addition of climate.

    My panel on climate risk and property values went well – this year the focus shifted a bit to resilience, and the opportunity to reduce the rate of insurance increases by putting money up front into strengthening homes. Several states are funding the initial outlay required in pilot programs as part of insurance affordability initiatives (including Deep South states). David Zhang of MSCI started off the discussion with a tally of damages from physical risk sorted into quintiles of cost (measured against home value). The top quintile is already at a mean of 55bps per year of loss (these are only losses from weather events of scale and insurance needs to include costs such as fires starting from appliances or flooding from sewer back-ups).

    Finally, we learned that Cotality has a database of property tax histories on all U.S. single-family homes and is working on an approach to forecast taxes going forward, so our vision of a full escrow-conditioned HPA and LDM is within reach.

    Contact us for more information on LDM v4.0.

    Key Takeaways (Daniel Swanson)

    It was great to see so many familiar faces and to see the conference booming (though also a bit foreboding – the last time it was so packed, there was a crisis shortly thereafter). Here are a few key takeaways I had from talking to different people.

    Non-QM

    • There is a lot of interest in non-QM from many sophisticated participants
    • Analyzing new loans is complicated and most people are not taking advantage of all the information in the deals

    Climate

    • State-level behavior is changing, particularly FL payups, perhaps due to taxes and insurance (that link is hard to prove)
    • Servicers are starting to care about T+I for several different reasons (escrow float=positive, delinquency risk=negative)

    Credit Scores

    • Participants are mostly worried about disruption to their process when thinking about credit scores rather than performance

    AI

    • Everyone is thinking about AI, whether they are talking about it or not (and there are plenty of people talking about it)

    How AD&Co and Optimal Blue Are Transforming Pipeline Risk Management for Loan Originators (Yvonne Chen)

    At the Optimal Blue Summit 2026, we connected with loan originators and our alliance partners at Optimal Blue to discuss the evolving challenges in the mortgage origination sector. The conversations and conference sessions reinforced the patterns we've been seeing: Origination is a thin margin business, and originators must carefully manage the uncertainty and financial risks from locking rates at the beginning of the application process through to loan sale. Lenders manage their pipelines across agency and non-agency loan products while simultaneously borrowing closing funds and hedging to protect their profit margins – all while contending with interest rate volatility, fallout risk, basis risk in non-QM products, and borrower renegotiation. Fallout rates have climbed in recent years as borrower behavior shifts and competition intensifies in a low-volume market, making accurate pipeline risk management more critical than ever. Optimal Blue and AD&Co see the persistent need for the kind of sophisticated analytics that we can provide to help lenders stay ahead of these challenges.

    AD&Co was featured on a panel where Matteo Caracciolo-King had the chance to present a first look at our insights on consumer behavior in the application process based on Optimal Blue’s national application data set. Originators were keenly interested in forecasting application stage transition probabilities, which vary over time and across interest rates, as well as the kind of financial risk metrics that AD&Co can provide. The conference confirmed our view that, as pipeline hedging grows more complex, particularly with a fast-growing non-agency market, we see a meaningful opportunity to help originators strengthen their risk management through advanced analytics integrated into the Optimal Blue platform they already rely on.

Blog - Archives

The S-Curve Archives

  • Andrew Davidson

    Thoughts

    The latest Policy Perspectives paper “Competing Claims in Privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” is now available!

    Nearly 20 years ago, on September 6, 2008, the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entered conservatorship. Since that time there have been many proposals to restructure, eliminate or release the GSEs. Once again there is talk about the privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

  • Tom Parrent

    Thoughts

    AD&Co held our annual employee meeting in Detroit, Michigan. In addition to gathering everyone in person to socialize and strategize, we use these annual meetings to learn about different cities, especially with regard to housing market dynamics.

    We chose Detroit because the oft-maligned city is undergoing a significant renaissance, and we wanted to explore the area and learn how housing may have played a role in both Detroit’s decline and rebirth.

  • Niraj Tailor, Hikmet Senay

    Products

    Andrew Davidson & Co., Inc (AD&Co) is pleased to announce the beta release of MARS+, the next generation of Mortgage Analysis & Reporting System (MARS), which has been in use since 2008 for performance reporting of AD&Co models. MARS+ aims to provide enhanced and advanced capabilities and features for mortgage analysis and reporting.

    The new enhancements of MARS+ include:

  • Eknath Belbase, Laura Silberg, Aidan Loftus, Joni Baker, Sam Sutton, Richard Cooperstein

    Events

    Several AD&Co employees attended SFVegas 2025. This post shares their unique perspectives from attending the conference and key takeaways from the sessions.

  • Eknath Belbase

    Thoughts

    We’re excited to announce our latest Quantitative Perspectives providing in-depth insights into current market trends and advanced valuation techniques. This publication offers valuable information for mortgage market participants and those involved in credit risk transfer transactions.

  • Laura Silberg, Andrew Davidson, Eknath Belbase, Alex Levin

    Podcast

    Tune in to Laura Silberg's interview with Andrew Davidson, Eknath Belbase and Alex Levin as they discuss their latest Quantitative Perspectives, our independent commentary series, titled 

  • Andrew Davidson

    Thoughts

    As providers of mortgage models for financial institutions, Andrew Davidson & Co., Inc. (AD&Co) enables clients to validate their use of our models and offers documentation describing the conceptual framework of the models, back-testing results, and sample forecasts under a variety of economic conditions. We also work with analytics providers who have incorporated our models to ensure that the models works as intended.

  • Alex Levin, Andrew Davidson, Eknath Belbase, Mickey Storms, Nathan Salwen

    Thoughts

    We’re excited to announce two new Quantitative Perspectives that provide in-depth insights into current market trends and advanced valuation techniques. These papers offer valuable information for mortgage market participants and those involved in credit risk transfer transactions.

  • Joni Baker

    Events

    Andrew Davidson & Co. Inc. (AD&Co) proudly sponsored the Information Management Network (IMN)’s 10th Annual Mortgage Servicing Rights (MSR) Forum, held November 21 - 22, 2024 at the New York Marriott at Brooklyn Bridge.

  • Michelle Stepien Breier, Alex Levin, Matteo Caracciolo-King

    Podcast

    Tune in to Michelle Stepien Breier's interview with Alex Levin & Matteo Caracciolo-King as they discuss their latest Pipeline article “AD&Co Updates its Home Price Index Model.” The interview highlights key points from the article as they share recent updates to the HPI3 model.