Richard Thornberry
Management
Thank you, Jack, that’s a great question. I think that--you know, I quiz our team all the time, are we seeing impact from either the imagined program or the EPMI program, which are the Fannie and Freddie programs, and the answer is we’re not. It’s largely, I think--you know, I think even in some recent commentary I’ve seen, they’re still quote-unquote in the pilot phase, building a relatively small number in terms of a pilot universe, so we’re not seeing impact on a day-to-day basis of the programs. I think there are many reasons for that, but largely because they don’t necessarily solve any problems for our customer that today we’re not already solving plus, in terms of other services we provide to our customers, in terms of continuing education and just the ongoing consultative relationship we have with our customers. I think not seeing much impact currently, and I would say as it relates to the tone in DC, there’s an interesting thing on November 14, I think the Senate banking--November 15, sorry, the Senate Finance Committee is holding hearings on these pilots, and so there will be testimony by FHFA and, I believe, the GSCs to address these issues. I would agree with you that there is a tremendous amount of discussion as to whether these pilots will continue or are appropriate, and I think what we’re most interested to see, as I said in my comments, is where the new FHFA leadership goes. Watt will be retiring in January and there will be a transition to new leadership, and we think from all the comments we’re hearing that these pilot programs, and it’s not just the MI - they just discontinued the financing to single family rental transactions and there is an MSR pilot there, and there’s probably a few other things that are kind of lower on the radar. We do think that there’s probably the right level of dialogue as to the appropriateness of how these pilots go forward, and so we’ll just have to wait and see where the new leadership team takes it.