Lending standards for business loans remained largely unchanged in the first quarter of 2022, according to the Federal Reserve’s senior loan officer opinion survey released today.
To help accelerate the growth of Secured Overnight Financing Rate options trading, CME Group today announced a new “SOFR First for Options” initiative that will kick off in June.
Economic activity expanded at a moderate pace between February and mid-April, though outlooks for future growth remained uncertain, given current geopolitical and inflation conditions, according to the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book release of the year.
Despite uncertainty related to COVID-19, four in 10 businesses say they expect their credit needs to increase in 2022, according to the JPMorgan Chase Business Leaders Outlook survey released today.
While the total amount of commercial real estate loans held by banks has grown, individual institutions’ holdings of CRE loans relative to capital levels have remained below peaks observed during the last recession, the FDIC said in the latest edition of FDIC Quarterly.
As required by state laws passed in New York and Alabama, the Alternative Reference Rates Committee published a statement today selecting and recommending forms of the Secured Overnight Financing Rate—its preferred alternative to Libor—along with associated spread adjustments and conforming changes, to replace references to 1-week and 2-month U.S. dollar Libor in certain contracts affected by the state laws.
Refinitiv, the Alternate Reference Committee’s chosen provider to publish fallback rates for cash products based on the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, today announced that its USD IBOR Institutional Cash Fallbacks are now available for immediate use as production benchmarks.
With certain tenors of Libor set to sunset at the end of 2021, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued a request for information on potential ways to amend its swap clearing requirement to address the transition away from Libor to alternative reference rates.
Credit quality for both loans secured by farmland and agricultural production loans improved in 2021, ag lenders reported in the joint ABA-Farmer Mac Agricultural Lenders Survey. In the next 12 months, lenders expect credit quality will either moderately improve or stay the same.
A majority of ag lenders—69.7%—reported that overall farm profitability increased in the prior year, due in large part to government support, which is estimated to account for 38% of ag borrowers’ net income, according to the 2021 Agricultural Lenders Survey conducted by ABA and Farmer Mac.