Fannie Mae Launches Refinance Application-Level Index

Fannie Mae announced today the launch of its Refinance Application-Level Index (RALI), a weekly series with data sourced from the industry's most widely used automated underwriting system, Fannie Mae's Desktop Underwriter, to provide lenders, investors, and other market participants with increased transparency on the past week's refinance activity and trends. 

"We are pleased to begin sharing the Fannie Mae Refinance Application-Level Index with external users, as we believe it will support more accurate tracking, modeling, and planning of refinance activity by mortgage market participants," said Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae senior vice president and chief economist.

The index is set to be released every Tuesday at 10 a.m. ET. RALI will provide two measures: a dollar-volume measure of unpaid principal balance, and a loan count measure. 

"Forecasting refinance originations and prepayments has become more challenging in the past two years, as the observed relationship between refinance incentive and prepayments has evolved," said Devang Doshi, Fannie Mae senior vice president, Capital Markets—Single-Family Products. "The RALI has been a strong leading indicator for prepayment activities, and we believe the additional transparency it brings industry participants will improve prepayment modeling performance."