Company: TIPT
Filing Date: 2025-03-03
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001393726-25-000028
Chunk: 99

Company: TIPTREE INC.
Filing Date: 2025-03-03
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 99
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 remains the same, and net income and cash flows, including cash available for servicing indebtedness, have correspondingly decreased. Our mortgage business currently has entered into, and in the future may continue to enter into, interest rate swaps that involve the exchange of floating for fixed-rate interest payments to reduce interest rate volatility. However, our mortgage business may not maintain interest rate swaps with respect to all of its variable-rate indebtedness, and any such swaps may not fully mitigate its interest rate risk, may prove disadvantageous, or may create additional risks.

In addition, our mortgage business is materially affected by the monetary policies of the U.S. government and its agencies. Our mortgage business is particularly affected by the policies of the Federal Reserve, which influence interest rates and impact the size of the loan origination market. In 2017, the Federal Reserve ended its quantitative easing program and started its balance sheet reduction plan. The Federal Reserve's balance sheet consists of U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities (“MBS”) issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. To shrink its balance sheet, the Federal Reserve had slowed the pace of MBS purchases to a point at which natural runoff exceeded new purchases, resulting in a net reduction. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state and federal authorities took several actions to provide relief to those negatively affected by COVID-19, such as the CARES Act and the Federal Reserve's support of the financial markets. The lasting results of these policies by the Federal Reserve are unknown at this time.

Our mortgage business’s MSRs are highly volatile assets with continually changing values, and these changes in value, or inaccuracies in estimates of their value, could adversely affect our mortgage business’s financial condition and results of operations.

The value of our mortgage business’s MSRs is based on the cash flows projected to result from the servicing of the related mortgage loans and continually fluctuates due to a number of factors. These factors include changes in interest rates; historically, the value of MSRs has increased when interest rates rise as higher interest rates lead to decreased prepayment rates, and has decreased when interest rates decline as lower interest rates lead to increased prepayment rates and refinancings. Other market conditions also affect the number of loans that are refinanced and thus no longer result in cash flows, and the number of loans that become delinquent.

Our mortgage business uses two external valuation firms to fair value its MSR assets. These valuation firms utilize market participant data and actual MSR market trades to value our MSRs for