The Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks, or FHLBank System) are 11 U.S. government-sponsored banks that provide liquidity to financial institutions to support housing finance and community investment. [1]
The Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks, or FHLBank System) are 11 U.S. government-sponsored banks that provide liquidity to financial institutions to support housing finance and community investment. [1]
The FHLBank System was chartered by Congress in 1932, during the Great Depression. [1] It has a primary mission of providing member financial institutions with financial products/services which assist and enhance the financing of housing and community lending. FHLBanks operate exclusively in the secondary market providing loans (advances) to financial institutions, not individuals. The 11 FHLBanks are each structured as cooperatives owned and governed by their member financial institutions, which today include savings and loan associations (thrifts), commercial banks, credit unions, and insurance companies. While FHLBanks are private, the FHLBank System is directly regulated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and FHLBanks enjoy certain benefits from their government sponsorship, namely an “implied guarantee” from the federal government and “Regulatory and income tax exemptions that reduce their operating costs.” [2] The Congressional Budget Office estimated in the 2024 fiscal year that FHLBanks receive a net government subsidy of $6.9 billion. [2]
The FHLBanks were established during the Great Depression by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) pursuant to the Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1932. After signing the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, President Herbert Hoover gave a statement describing the purpose of the FHLBank System:
The purpose of the system is both to meet the present emergency and to build up homeownership on more favorable terms than exist today. The immediate credit situation has for the time being in many parts of the country restricted the activities of building and loan associations, savings banks, and other institutions making loans for home purposes, in such fashion that they are not only unable to extend credit for the acquirement of new homes, but in thousands of instances they have been unable to renew existing mortgages with resultant foreclosures and great hardships. [3]
The FHLBank System was roughly structured as a Federal Reserve system for thrifts. [4] At the time, thrifts could not join the Federal Reserve and access emergency lending through the discount window, explaining why the FHLBanks were initially needed to address emergency needs of the Great Depression. [4] Initially, the FHLBanks made direct loans to homeowners, but the Home Owners’ Loan Act of 1933 transferred this responsibility to the newly established Home Owners' Loan Corporation and authorized the FHLBB to charter and regulate federal thrifts. [5] [1] In 1937, the FHLBank System issues its first consolidated obligations. [1]
The Emergency Home Finance Act of 1970 provided the FHLBank System with $250 million to subsidize interest rates on home construction advances. [1] In 1982, the Garn St. Germain Depository Institutions Act eliminates restrictions on collateral FHLBanks can accept. [1]
In response to the savings and loan crisis of 1986-1995, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) abolished the FHLBB and transferred oversight responsibility of the FHLBanks to the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB) and regulatory responsibility to the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) in the Department of the Treasury. FIRREA also made commercial banks and credit unions eligible to be members of FHLBanks if 10% of their assets were in residential mortgages. [1]
As a result of the Great Recession, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) replaced the FHFB with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). The Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to purchase FHLBank debt securities in any amount through December 31, 2009, after which the limit would return to the original $4 billion. HERA also made community development financial institutions (CDFIs) eligible to be FHLBank members. [1]
In 2015, an FHFA final rule authorized non-federally insured credit unions to be FHLBank members.
In 1946, the FHLBank of Los Angeles and FHLBank of Portland are merged to create the FHLBank of San Francisco and was split into the FHLBank of San Francisco and FHLBank of Spokane (later Seattle) in 1963. In 2015, the FHLBank of Seattle and FHLBank of Des Moines voluntarily merged.
Since August 2006, all 11 banks have been registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and all financial statements and other filings are available to the public at the SEC website (EDGAR).
On August 5, 2011, the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that the FHLBanks had satisfied their obligation to make payments related to the Resolution Funding Corporation (RefCorp) bonds. The Banks were required to pay 20 percent of their net income (after payments to the Affordable Housing Program) toward the RefCorp bond payments. Each Bank now pays 20% of its net income into its own separate restricted retained earnings account until the account equals one percent of that Bank's outstanding consolidated obligations. [6]
At times, FHLBanks have been used as a “lender of next-to-last resort” providing emergency liquidity to distressed banks. [7] Such was the case in 2023 when a few member banks with exposure to the cryptocurrency industry (Silvergate Capital Corporation, Signature Bank and Metropolitan Bank Holding Corporation) received FHLB loans in response to a run on deposit withdrawals. The FHLBank of San Francisco also loaned $30 billion to Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) prior to SVB’s collapse. [8] According to the FHFA, “During the week beginning March 13, 2023, the FHLBanks funded $675.6 billion in advances, the largest one-week advance volume in FHLBank System history.” [1]
These lending practices have drawn criticism for two reasons: advances to distressed banks are unrelated to the core mission activities of the FHLBank System and can obscure or worsen financial instability. Bloomberg Businessweek quoted Michael Bright, chief executive officer of the trade group Structured Finance Association and a former interim head of the Government National Mortgage Association or Ginnie Mae as saying, "It’s a strange irony. You have a lot of banks that access the FHLBs, but aren’t using advances for mortgage liquidity" [9] [10] [11] Aaron Klein, Kathryn Judge, and Alan Cui from The Brookings Institution argue that “Allowing banks and thrifts to go the FHLBanks instead undermines [mechanisms for ensuring accountability at the Federal Reserve] and can allow problems at banks to fester.” [12] Furthermore, FHLBanks demanding larger haircuts on collateral “tend[s] to exacerbate liquidity strains.” [13]
Mark T. Williams from Boston University, in the Financial Times, point to the important on-demand liquidity and shock absorber role the FHLBanks perform in times of financial crisis. He contends that the March 2023 bank runs would have been more pronounced had such lending not been available. [14]
As part of a comprehensive review of the FHLBank System, the FHFA noted the necessity of distinguishing the role of FHLBanks and The Federal Reserve in emergency lending situations. FHLBanks face "operational and financing limitations" which make them unfit to serve as the lender of last resort. [1] Moreover, while FHLBanks did not incur losses on their advances, the broader financial system bears the cost “highlighting the need for greater focus by the FHLBanks on evaluating member creditworthiness and better coordination with their members’ primary regulators when a member’s financial condition is deteriorating.” [1]
In November 2023, the FHFA released a comprehensive review titled: FHLBank System at 100: Focusing on the Future. [1] The report articulates a vision for the future of the FHLBank System highlighting reforms to the FHLBank System’s core mission activities and operations. The proposed reforms include: [1]
As one of the first steps to the reform, the FHFA requested comment on the FHLBank System’s core mission activities in 2024, receiving 234 comments. [15]
The money market is a component of the economy that provides short-term funds. The money market deals in short-term loans, generally for a period of a year or less.
The Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA), or Ginnie Mae, is a government-owned corporation of the United States Federal Government within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It was founded in 1968 and works to expand affordable housing by guaranteeing housing loans (mortgages) thereby lowering financing costs such as interest rates for those loans. It does that through guaranteeing to investors the on-time payment of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) even if homeowners default on the underlying mortgages and the homes are foreclosed upon.
The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a United States government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) and, since 1968, a publicly traded company. Founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal, the corporation's purpose is to expand the secondary mortgage market by securitizing mortgage loans in the form of mortgage-backed securities (MBS), allowing lenders to reinvest their assets into more lending and in effect increasing the number of lenders in the mortgage market by reducing the reliance on locally based savings and loan associations. Its brother organization is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), better known as Freddie Mac.
A savings and loan association (S&L), or thrift institution, is a financial institution that specializes in accepting savings deposits and making mortgage and other loans. While the terms "S&L" and "thrift" are mainly used in the United States, similar institutions in the United Kingdom, Ireland and some Commonwealth countries include building societies and trustee savings banks. They are often mutually held, meaning that the depositors and borrowers are members with voting rights, and have the ability to direct the financial and managerial goals of the organization like the members of a credit union or the policyholders of a mutual insurance company. While it is possible for an S&L to be a joint-stock company, and even publicly traded, in such instances it is no longer truly a mutual association, and depositors and borrowers no longer have membership rights and managerial control. By law, thrifts can have no more than 20 percent of their lending in commercial loans—their focus on mortgage and consumer loans makes them particularly vulnerable to housing downturns such as the deep one the U.S. experienced in 2007.
The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the failure of approximately a third of the savings and loan associations in the United States between 1986 and 1995. These thrifts were banks that historically specialized in fixed-rate mortgage lending. The Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) closed or otherwise resolved 296 thrifts from 1986 to 1989, whereupon the newly established Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) took up these responsibilities. The two agencies closed 1,043 banks that held $519 billion in assets. The total cost of taxpayers by the end of 1999 was $123.8 billion with an additional $29.1 billion of losses imposed onto the thrift industry.
The Community Reinvestment Act is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to help meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Congress passed the Act in 1977 to reduce discriminatory credit practices against low-income neighborhoods, a practice known as redlining.
The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), commonly known as Freddie Mac, is an American publicly traded, government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), headquartered in Tysons, Virginia. The FHLMC was created in 1970 to expand the secondary market for mortgages in the US. Along with its sister organization, the Federal National Mortgage Association, Freddie Mac buys mortgages, pools them, and sells them as a mortgage-backed security (MBS) to private investors on the open market. This secondary mortgage market increases the supply of money available for mortgage lending and increases the money available for new home purchases. The name "Freddie Mac" is a variant of the FHLMC initialism of the company's full name that was adopted officially for ease of identification.
The Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) was a U.S. board created by the Federal Home Loan Bank Act in 1932 that governed the Federal Home Loan Banks, also created by the act; the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC); and nationally-chartered thrifts. It was abolished and superseded by the Federal Housing Finance Board and the Office of Thrift Supervision in 1989 due to the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, as Federal Home Loan Banks gave favorable lending to the thrifts it regulated, leading to regulatory capture.
Bank of America Home Loans is the mortgage unit of Bank of America. It previously existed as an independent company called Countrywide Financial from 1969 to 2008. In 2008, Bank of America purchased the failing Countrywide Financial for $4.1 billion. In 2006, Countrywide financed 20% of all mortgages in the United States, at a value of about 3.5% of the United States GDP, a proportion greater than any other single mortgage lender.
A community development financial institution (US) or community development finance institution (UK) - abbreviated in both cases to CDFI - is a financial institution that provides credit and financial services to underserved markets and populations, primarily in the USA but also in the UK. A CDFI may be a community development bank, a community development credit union (CDCU), a community development loan fund (CDLF), a community development venture capital fund (CDVC), a microenterprise development loan fund, or a community development corporation.
The Farm Credit System (FCS) in the United States is a nationwide network of borrower-owned lending institutions and specialized service organizations. The Farm Credit System provides more than $373 billion in loans, leases, and related services to farmers, ranchers, rural homeowners, aquatic producers, timber harvesters, agribusinesses, and agricultural and rural utility cooperatives. As of 2021, the Farm Credit System provides more than 45% of the total market share of US farm business debt.
The Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), is a United States federal law enacted in the wake of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.
The Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB) was an independent agency of the United States government established in 1989 in the aftermath of the savings and loan crisis to take over management of the Federal Home Loan Banks from the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB), and was superseded by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in 2008.
The subprime mortgage crisis impact timeline lists dates relevant to the creation of a United States housing bubble, the 2005 housing bubble burst and the subprime mortgage crisis which developed during 2007 and 2008. It includes United States enactment of government laws and regulations, as well as public and private actions which affected the housing industry and related banking and investment activity. It also notes details of important incidents in the United States, such as bankruptcies and takeovers, and information and statistics about relevant trends. For more information on reverberations of this crisis throughout the global financial system see 2007–2008 financial crisis.
The United States Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 was designed primarily to address the subprime mortgage crisis. It authorized the Federal Housing Administration to guarantee up to $300 billion in new 30-year fixed rate mortgages for subprime borrowers if lenders wrote down principal loan balances to 90 percent of current appraisal value. It was intended to restore confidence in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by strengthening regulations and injecting capital into the two large U.S. suppliers of mortgage funding. States are authorized to refinance subprime loans using mortgage revenue bonds. Enactment of the Act led to the government conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is an independent federal agency in the United States created as the successor regulatory agency of the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB), the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development government-sponsored enterprise mission team, absorbing the powers and regulatory authority of both entities, with expanded legal and regulatory authority, including the ability to place government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) into receivership or conservatorship.
In September 2008, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced that it would take over the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. Both government-sponsored enterprises, which finance home mortgages in the United States by issuing bonds, had become illiquid as the market for those bonds collapsed in the subprime mortgage crisis. The FHFA established conservatorships in which each enterprise's management works under the FHFA's direction to reduce losses and to develop a new operating structure that will allow a return to self-management.
The U.S. central banking system, the Federal Reserve, in partnership with central banks around the world, took several steps to address the subprime mortgage crisis. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stated in early 2008: "Broadly, the Federal Reserve’s response has followed two tracks: efforts to support market liquidity and functioning and the pursuit of our macroeconomic objectives through monetary policy." A 2011 study by the Government Accountability Office found that "on numerous occasions in 2008 and 2009, the Federal Reserve Board invoked emergency authority under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to authorize new broad-based programs and financial assistance to individual institutions to stabilize financial markets. Loans outstanding for the emergency programs peaked at more than $1 trillion in late 2008."
The subprime mortgage crisis reached a critical stage during the first week of September 2008, characterized by severely contracted liquidity in the global credit markets and insolvency threats to investment banks and other institutions.
The 2007–2008 financial crisis, or the global financial crisis (GFC), was the most severe worldwide economic crisis since the 1929 Wall Street crash that began the Great Depression. Causes of the crisis included predatory lending in the form of subprime mortgages to low-income homebuyers and a resulting housing bubble, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, and lack of regulatory oversight, which culminated in a "perfect storm" that triggered the Great Recession, which lasted from late 2007 to mid-2009. The financial crisis began in early 2007, as mortgage-backed securities (MBS) tied to U.S. real estate, as well as a vast web of derivatives linked to those MBS, collapsed in value. Financial institutions worldwide suffered severe damage, reaching a climax with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, and a subsequent international banking crisis.
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