Lender Knowingly Wrote Millions Of Dollars In Crappy Loans, Abandoning Prudent Underwriting Standards, Says Mortgage Insurer In Lawsuit

In Los Angeles, California, Courthouse News Service reports:

• MBIA Insurance Corp. says IndyMac Bank knowingly loaned millions of dollars to borrowers who could not afford to repay the loans, leaving the stock insurance company to pay out more than $487 million on its guarantees with an expected $566 million more to come, MBIA claims in Superior Court.(1)

• MBIA says IndyMac "abandoned any reasonable and prudent underwriting standards" in an "effort to expand its market share during the mortgage lending boom," according to the complaint. MBIA also says IndyMac encouraged its workers to inflate borrowers' incomes on loan applications to get them loans for which they wouldn't have qualified. MBIA says the thousands of mortgage loans in default or foreclosure "would not have occurred if IndyMac had followed the loan-origination practices that it represented to investors it was following."

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• In May, 20 banks and financial services companies sued MBIA with allegations that it fraudulently restructured itself to strip it of $5 billion in cash and securities and to start a new insurance business to duck its obligations to the banks.

For the story, see MBIA Insurance Sues IndyMac.

(1) MBIA provided financial guaranty insurance in the form of guarantees of the trust obligations to make principal and interest payments on the loans.