The sale of the MBS, issued by the state-run Korea Housing Finance Corp. to securitize mortgage loans, amounted to 37 trillion won (27.7 billion U.S. dollars) in 2023 compared to 17.2 trillion won in the previous year, according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).
The surging issuance came on the back of high demand for the government-backed mortgage loans amid high interest rates.
The central bank had left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 3.50 percent since January last year after hiking it by 3.0 percentage points for the past one and a half years.
The issuance of asset-backed securities (ABS), including MBS, stood at 66.1 trillion won in 2023, up 50.2 percent from a year earlier.
The ABS issuance by financial companies expanded 11.8 percent to 20.9 trillion won as interest rate hikes sharply increased non-performing loans that were securitized as ABS.
The ABS sale by industrial companies slightly decreased to 8.1 trillion won last year.
The outstanding ABS issuance came in at 253.4 trillion won at the end of December, up 10.0 percent from a year earlier. (1 won equals 0.00075 U.S. dollars)
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