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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AD&Conversations: CIS Pilot ProjectPodcastTune in to our fourth episode of AD&Conversations with Kevin Lin and Eknath Belbase, our product lead for our Climate model. In this episode, they discuss the new Climate Impact Suite (CIS) pilot project, and Belbase outlines several challenges the team is navigating, including:
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Helping users become familiar with climate-related casualty data
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Identifying the most suitable scenarios to use
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Determining the best way to visualize the results
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Andrew Davidson Guest Speaker on Equifax's Market Pulse PodcastPodcast
Andrew Davidson was invited to speak on Equifax's Market Pulse Podcast titled, "Driving Efficiency and Resilience in the Mortgage Industry" live at the 2025 MBA Annual Convention in Las Vegas.
Andy explains how variations in data files can distort risk assessment, creating a dual risk for lenders: extending credit to borrowers more likely to default while overcharging customers whose risk is overstated.
Click here to learn more.
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Policy Perspectives - Housing Market Dynamics and Mortgage RiskThoughtsOur latest Policy Perspective written by Richard Cooperstein offers an analysis of the U.S. housing and mortgage finance markets, focusing on key trends and forward-looking risks. While housing markets are not fully efficient, they do respond to economic imbalances which create opportunities and vulnerabilities. This article explores how demographic shifts, credit access, interest rates, and climate risks shape both housing demand and supply.
Key findings include:
- Weak demand fundamentals, especially among new homeowners
- Easing supply shortages and slowing price growth
- Elevated risk of broader housing price declines amid rising recession concerns
- Notable exposure of higher-coupon mortgages and servicing rights to interest rate and credit risks
Cooperstein also assess the resilience of mortgage-related assets under current and projected conditions.
Click here to read now!
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AD&Conversations: Exploring KineticsPodcast
Join Kevin Lin in a conversation with Richard Cooperstein as they dive into Kinetics, AD&Co's modular platform designed to deliver the full power of our models and analytics; with the flexibility to license only the tools you need. In this interview, they unpack insights from Eric Limjoco's recent Pipeline article, "Driving Sharper Insights with the Kinetics Reporting Engine," and share a sneak peek into what's coming with the Kinetics 2.0 release.
As a seasoned internal power user, Richard shares why this upgrade is an innovative enhancement for delivering comprehensive solutions across the mortgage space.
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Policy Perspectives - Competing Claims In Privatization Of Fannie Mae And Freddie MacThoughts
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.
Privatization faces many hurdles both political and financial. In his article, Andrew Davidson looks at some of the financial considerations and shows that any solution will require a compromise between competing financial claims.
Click here to read now!
The S-Curve Archives
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ProductsThe release of Andrew Davidson & Co., Inc.’s (AD&Co) new generation of financial engineering tools marks a shift to a new reality; when the traditional benchmark for MBS valuation, the LIBOR/ Swap yield curve, becomes unavailable. Our recent Product Release email informed our readers about the change. In short, our users can:
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ThoughtsFHFA held a listening session for interested parties on its proposed rule on the GSE process for credit scores. The objective is making mortgage underwriting and pricing more accurate and more fair while balancing practical implementation by firms in the mortgage ecosystem. Along with many others, I had the opportunity to provide insights on this proposed rulemaking.
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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: