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29 » VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT Certainly, no one on the planet aims for anything short of squeaky-clean credit. e reality, however, is that nearly half of Americans wrestle with serious money woes, making securing mortgages and purchasing houses very nearly impossible. In fact, PYMNTS has coined a name for this struggling demographic: the "financial invisibles." To ascertain how these cash-strapped cohorts access financial tools and manage their credit, PYMNTS teamed with Unifund to create the Financial Invisibles Index. e index analyzed the survey responses of more than 2,000 Americans about their financial habits and circumstances. (It's worth noting that the study sought relatively low-income Americans to help deepen insights into the use of credit by "financially challenged" folks, the companies explained.) After shaking out the data, the researchers pinpointed four personas of financial invisibles: » No Worries: People who have no delinquencies and can fully participate in the financial system. » Second Chances: ose who have had past delinquencies but can still participate in the financial system. » On the Edge: People who struggle to make ends meet and have no delinquencies but are unable to participate in the financial system. Shut Outs: ose who have had delinquencies in the past and, as a result, can't participate in the financial system. It's important to mention that a big swath of the so-called invisibles aren't that way by choice and would much prefer to participate in the banking system, the study says, which is to say they would love nothing more than to score a mortgage and buy a home. Unfortunately, a lack of access to credit and a poor credit rating often deter them from managing bill payments and seeking financial well-being, let alone becoming homeowners. To illustrate the low-credit point, for example: Shut Outs reported an average credit score of 525, while On the Edge members had an average score of 589. e No Worries group, however, noted an average score of 714. As it relates to housing and homeownership, the key takeaway from this pretty much goes without saying: Whether visible or not, financial stability plays a huge role in a would-be buyer's ability to procure a residence. LEHMAN BROTHERS HOLDINGS FACE TRUSTEES' CLAIMS Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. recently defended against allegations from residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) trustees as the trustees questioned the bank on the value of the claims submitted during the financial crisis in 2008, according to pretrial briefs in an article released by Law360. Ultimately, the issue here is that trustees argue Lehman Brothers' "straightforward breach of contract claims" are worth $11.4 billion, while the bank argued they're worth $2.38 billion or less." Lehman Brothers' pretrial brief begins by clarifying that "there is no 'Lehman' but rather, what remains is a Plan Administrator." And according to the administrator, many of the trustees' claims have been "significantly overstated," despite the Plan Administrator's many attempts to "work diligently towards a resolution" in regards to the hundreds of thousands of claims filed by the trustee. However, the trustees are disagreeing in their own pretrial brief, saying that there's "overwhelming and largely unrebutted" evidence that Lehman repeatedly breached its contracts on tens of thousands of loans. e trustees claim that of the approximately $11.4 billion Lehman Brothers' breaches should owe, that $8.8 billion of that sum consists of breaches based on borrower misrepresentations of income, omissions of debt, or failure to use the mortgaged property in accordance with the borrower's commitments under the application, and mortgage, according to the pretrial brief. In addition, roughly $370 million consists of DTI breaches, while the remaining approximately $2.3 billion of the trustees' claim consists of breaches of several additional representations and warranties, "as set forth in the reports of the trustees' underwriting experts Jim Aronoff and Chip Morrow." e trustees' brief also notes that an additional $370 million consists of breaches related to misrepresentations regarding borrowers' ratio of debt to income, and the remaining $2.3 billion consists of breaches related to several additional representations and warranties. According to the trustees' pretrial brief, these numbers are not surprising. "e excesses of the pre-2008 mortgage market are now part of the public—and this court's—record. Lehman's own documents show it was aware of the widespread problems and deteriorating performance of the loans it had securitized, even as compared to the rest of the industry," the trustees' reported. "The excesses of the pre-2008 mortgage market are now part of the public—and this court's—record. Lehman's own documents show it was aware of the widespread problems and deteriorating performance of the loans it had securitized, even as compared to the rest of the industry." According to the Federal Housing Administration's Annual Report to Congress in November, the total economic worth of FHA's Mutual Mortgage Fund was $25.6 billion for fiscal year 2017. KNOW THIS

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