Housing and Urban Development reproposes and adopts a regulation under the -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act that is equivalent to a proposed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- regulation that was withdrawn in 2004. --------------------------------------
HUD regulations under RESPA prohibit paying lenders for the referral of settlement services, including mortgage insurance, and prohibit lenders from receiving such payments. In July 2002, HUD proposed a regulation that would exclude from these anti-referral fee provisions settlement services included in a package of settlement services offered to a borrower at a guaranteed price. HUD withdrew this proposed regulation in March 2004. Under the proposed regulation, if mortgage insurance were required on a loan, the package must include any mortgage insurance premium paid at settlement. Although certain state insurance regulations prohibit an insurer''s payment of referral fees, had this regulation been adopted in this form, our revenues could have been adversely affected to the extent that lenders offered such packages and received value from us in excess of what they could have received were the anti-referral fee provisions of RESPA to apply and if such state regulations were not applied to prohibit such payments.
We could be adversely affected if personal information on consumers that
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we maintain is improperly disclosed. ------------------------------------
As part of our business, we maintain large amounts of personal information on consumers. While we believe we have appropriate information security policies and systems to prevent unauthorized disclosure, there can be no assurance that unauthorized disclosure, either through the actions of third parties or employees, will not occur. Unauthorized disclosure could adversely affect our reputation and expose us to material claims for damages.
The implementation of the Basel II capital accord may discourage the use
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of mortgage insurance. ----------------------
In 1988, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) developed the Basel Capital Accord (the Basel I), which set out international benchmarks for assessing banks'' capital adequacy requirements. In June 2005, the BCBS issued an update to Basel I (as revised in November 2005, Basel II). Basel II, which is scheduled to become effective in the United States and many other countries in 2008, affects the capital treatment provided to mortgage insurance by domestic and international banks in both their origination and securitization activities.
The Basel II provisions related to residential mortgages and mortgage insurance may provide incentives to certain of our bank customers not to insure mortgages having a lower risk of claim and to insure mortgages having a higher risk of claim. The Basel II provisions may also alter the competitive positions and financial performance of mortgage insurers in other ways, including reducing our ability to successfully establish or operate our planned international operations.
Our international operations will subject us to numerous risks.
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We have committed significant resources to begin international operations, initially in Australia, where we started to write business June 2007. We plan to expand our international activities to other countries, including Canada. Accordingly, in addition to the general economic and insurance business-related factors discussed above, we are subject to a number of risks associated with our international business activities, including: