The sale of the MBS, issued by the state-run Korea Housing Finance Corp. to securitize mortgage loans, came in at 7.0 trillion won (5.3 billion U.S. dollars) in the January-March quarter, up 10.8 percent from the same quarter of last year, according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).
The double-digit growth came on the back of high demand for government-backed mortgage loans that allow the floating-rate loans to be altered into fixed-rate ones amid the higher interest rates.
The country's central bank began to tighten its monetary policy stance in August 2021, hiking its policy rate by 3.0 percentage points to 3.50 percent.
The issuance of asset-backed securities (ABS), including the MBS, amounted to 10.7 trillion won (8.2 billion dollars) in the first quarter, down 1.8 percent from a year earlier.
The ABS issuance by financial firms grew 5.9 percent due to demand for the ABS, sold by banks with non-performing loans (NPL) as underlying assets, while the sale by industrial companies dropped 45.4 percent in the quarter.
The outstanding ABS issuance stood at 230.8 trillion won (176 billion dollars) at the end of March, up 1.2 percent from a year earlier.
Latest comments