Banking Tech Awards USA 2022 Winner: Freddie Mac Clarity 2.0

Get Clarity into mortgage credit risk investing through Freddie Mac.

Banking Tech Awards USA 2022 Winner: Freddie Mac – Best UX/CX in Finance Initiative

As the leading seller of mortgage credit risk, Freddie Mac Single-Family makes it easy to access the vast amount of publicly disclosed data through its award-winning Clarity Data Intelligence platform.

Clarity provides transparency across Freddie Mac STACR (Structured Agency Credit Risk) and ACIS (Agency Credit Insurance Structure) transaction collateral and performance data. Its credit risk transfer (CRT) dashboards contain approximately 450 million deal and loan records with up to 88 variables.

Additionally, Clarity gives users the ability to analyse the Single-Family Loan-Level Dataset, a database containing more than 1.5 billion performance records on approximately 43 million loans.

Adapting to a changing environment

Launched in 2019, Clarity faced its greatest test just a year later when the COVID-19 pandemic nearly shut down the US economy and dislocated markets. Investors in the capital markets space – especially those investing in credit risk – had a growing need for data transparency into loan performance, forbearance, and the mortgage market.

Based on these end-user needs and in a continued effort to provide critical insight into loans affected by the pandemic, Freddie Mac released several supplemental enhancements with Clarity Data Intelligence 2.0, including:

• Cumulative Performance deal dashboard, which provides monthly cumulative performance loan characteristics, both as a percentage of unpaid principal balance (UPB) and in UPB dollars.
• Performance Charts that track CRT deal performance data over the prior 24 months, organised by loan delinquent statuses (D60+, D90+, D120+, D180+, Total), Total Forbearance, Forbearance Delinquent and Payment Deferral in either percentages or dollars.
• Disaster Matrix dashboard that enables recovery and transition comparisons among major natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic.
• CRT Investor Participation dashboard that allows users to gauge the CRT market by showing investor types and unique investor counts by year or deal.
• Additional filters and views added to dashboards, which expand options for users to monitor and track loan transition for delinquency and loss mitigation statuses.
• CRT Loan-Level Disclosure Data Download that integrates CRT datasets previously hosted on an external site, supporting easy file access for end-users and including deal-level filters to refine downloads across deal name, losses, deal and disclosure type, offering and series year.

Recent enhancements driven by user feedback have enabled Freddie Mac to optimise Clarity for CRT investors and stakeholders. Clarity 2.0 dramatically improves the user experience on the platform by:

• Enabling users to accomplish multiple tasks (e.g. compare CRT deals and benchmarks) in a single space.
• Integrating relevant content and commentary for better insight into Freddie Mac’s unique CRT programmes.
• Providing guides, tips and easier navigation throughout the platform on any device.

The additional functionality and usability that Clarity 2.0 provided includes:

• A new look and design backed by an improved digital infrastructure.
• Featured Insights section that provides latest research and original CRT insights and analytics.
• Quick Access navigation menus allowing users to get to the data dashboard they want in a single click from the new streamlined homepage.
• User Guide and Glossary to help users better navigate the site’s functionality and understand metrics.
• CRT Deal Compare enables users to compare several CRT deals or benchmarks across six categories on a single screen (Options include Origination, FICO & DTI, Delinquency, Cumulative Loss, Paydown Tests and Tranches).
• Dynamic Dashboards – all new and existing data dashboards are easier to digest, with charts and tables in a single view.

Measuring our success

The success and measurable impact of Clarity 2.0 is a testament to Freddie Mac’s commitment to providing the CRT community with data transparency through an intelligent platform built on needs and wants of the platform’s users. Since the update, Clarity 2.0 has seen:

• a 111% increase in Clarity Data Intelligence users;
• a 96% increase in Clarity Data Intelligence sessions;
• a 64% increase in mobile (phone/tablet) sessions;
• approximately 30,000 pageviews; and
• a 6% increase in international sessions.

More information about Clarity is available at clarity.freddiemac.com

By Charlotte Gladwin, Director, Credit Risk Transfer at Freddie Mac