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NAFCU yesterday sent its recently released housing finance reform principles to all members of Congress and top members of the administration. Concurrently, the Senate Banking Committee announced a hearing next week on the topic.

NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger sent letters along with NAFCU's housing finance reform principles to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, NCUA Acting Chairman J. Mark McWatters, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt and Mark Calabria, chief economist for Vice President Mike Pence.

In its housing finance reform principles, NAFCU reiterates the importance of unfettered access to the secondary mortgage market for credit unions with fair pricing based on loan quality as opposed to volume.

The association's core principles also include:

• an explicit government guarantee on the payment of principal and interest on mortgage-backed securities;
• self-funded government-sponsored enterprises without any dedicated government appropriations;
• the creation of a Federal Housing Finance Agency board of advisors;
• allowance for the GSEs to rebuild their capital buffers;
• the Federal Home Loan Banks remaining a central part of the mortgage market; and
• credit risk transactions being expanded and the Common Securitization Platform and the Single Security retained.

In next week's Senate Banking Committee hearing, slated for 10 a.m. Eastern Thursday, the committee will hear from representatives of the Mortgage Bankers Association, Financial Services Roundtable and Center for Responsible Lending on principles of housing finance reform.