Household HSBC Watch

With the United States in a recession the double-speak is interesting. Some call the recession of 2000-2001 a “mini-recession.” Now HSBC’s Douglas Flint has a “technical recession.” HSBC finance director Douglas Flint said: “The issue now is the US slowdown and whether it enters a technical recession, and what that does to […]

HSBC made the news again. This time it was an article about home equity lines of credit — or the fact that such credit lines are frozen or gone all together. When Denise Lopez bought two new tables, a floor lamp and a chair recently, her intent was to finance it with her […]

Traditional credit scores haven’t done a good job in accessing risk for non-traditional mortgage products such as interest-only loans and option adjustable rate mortgages, says a senior executive with HSBC Holding Plc, a British international banking giant.

In discussing trends in HSBC’s U.S. mortgage business this year, company officials this week told analysts that they expect […]

The following evolved into a dedicated page. Read “The HSBC Killzone” to see how this evolved.

A question often asked by those harmed and hurt by HSBC is how they determine who to hurt financially. Early in the investigation one could not determine if people were targeted by their credit scores. Common sense […]

The three credit bureaus insist a new scoring system, called VantageScore, will simplify the credit-granting process. However, they have released so few details about it that industry officials and consumer activists said that the credit-application process could become more confusing for consumers, certainly in the short-term and possibly longer.

One reason: VantageScore will use a […]

Let’s make a distinction between a subprime loan and a predatory loan. The former is a loan that has a higher-than-market rate of interest to compensate for the risk of lending to a borrower with less-than-perfect credit. The latter is defined as a subset of subprime loans and, and includes one or more of the […]

The new bankruptcy law requires debtors to come up with a payment plan to satisfy unsecured creditors like the card companies. So how do credit card issuers really look at the newly bankrupt? During a recent conference Capital One Vice President Mike Rowen checked off for his listeners the things that make the […]

This is from Fitch, on November 3: “Fitch Rates HSBC Automotive Trust 2005-3 [which] marks HSBC Automotive Finance Corp.’s (HAFC) 17th Fitch-rated securitization backed by retail loans to subprime borrowers… As of Oct. 23, 2005 (the cut-off date), the receivables consisted of $1.37 billion in loans to subprime borrowers with weighted average FICO scores of […]

Traditional lenders typically offer lower rates than competitors to snare customers. In contrast, subprime lenders base rates on credit scores, so what is a ‘’fair” rate can be difficult to gauge. Subprime borrowers’ credit scores typically fall below 620, on a scale of 350 to 850. To compensate for taking on these riskier customers, […]

7/13/2005 - Metris has been notified that the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission plans to recommend that a civil injunction be brought against the company for possible violations of federal securities laws. In a press release late Tuesday, Metris said it received what’s called a Wells notice from the SEC staff in […]