SAN FRANCISCO, March 30, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco announced today that it is extending its deadline for discontinuing its cost of funds indices from early 2021 to early 2022.
The Bank plans to continue publishing the 11th District Monthly Weighted Average Cost of Funds Index (COFI) until the announcement of the December 2021 COFI in January 2022. The Bank also plans to continue publishing the Semiannual Weighted Average Cost of Funds Indices for the 11th District and for California until the announcement of the July-December 2021 indices in February 2022.
On December 7, 2018, the Bank announced that it would stop publishing three cost of funds indices in early 2020 because of the significant decline in the number of financial institutions eligible to report the data used to calculate the indices. Last year, at the request of its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Bank extended that deadline by one year to early 2021. The regulator has asked the Bank to extend the deadline for discontinuing COFI an additional year to allow market participants sufficient time to appropriately transition to a COFI replacement index that is robust and sustainable.
The 11th District includes Arizona, California, and Nevada, and only savings institution members of the Bank that meet certain criteria are included in the indices. When the monthly COFI was originally developed in 1981, there were over 200 savings institutions that reported their cost of funds data to the Bank. Today there are only nine.
The UCLA Anderson Forecast, a unit of the UCLA Anderson School of Management, undertook an independent study of the utility of existing and observable reference rate indices in the absence of the 11th District cost of funds indices, funded by a research grant from the Bank. UCLA Anderson Forecast published their study, Consequences of the Discontinuation of the Eleventh District Cost of Funds Index, in April 2019.
Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco
The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco is a member-driven cooperative helping local lenders in Arizona, California, and Nevada build strong communities, create opportunity, and change lives for the better. The tools and resources we provide to our member financial institutions–commercial banks, credit unions, industrial loan companies, savings institutions, insurance companies, and community development financial institutions–foster homeownership, expand access to quality housing, seed or sustain small businesses, and revitalize whole neighborhoods. Together with our members and other partners, we are making the communities we serve more vibrant and resilient
CONTACT: Amy Stewart, 415-308-8959, stewarta@fhlbsf.com