Lease of life for lenders
In a sign that the securitisation market continues its limited recovery, a couple of lenders are bringing a more diverse range of products to market. Last Friday Macquarie Bank launched a $500 million securitisation of vehicle lease receivables sold by its Macquarie Leasing arm. It is the third securitisation through the SMART Master TrustAnd yesterday Liberty Financial launched a $101 million securitisation of non-conforming vehicle lease receivables, Liberty Series 2007-1 Auto Trust.These issues continue the trend of recent weeks. Groups such as Bank of Queensland, Puma, FirstMac, Liberty, Calibre and Columbus have come to market with small issues and have marketed them to local investors.The two previous SMART transactions closed in March and June this year. The main difference between this transaction and the previous two is the inclusion of a euro-denominated tranche of notes.The pool contains 16,030 contracts comprised of novated leases, finance leases, commercial hire purchase, and chattel mortgage contracts.More than 90 per cent of the receivables are backed by cars. Novated leases make up more than 50 per cent of the collateral pool and Standard & Poor's noted in its presale report that historic losses on the novated lease portion of the portfolio have been very low.The Liberty issue is also its third securitisation of vehicle loans. Liberty has been originating vehicle loans since 2001.Liberty Series 2007-1 Auto Trust is a pool of 5420 loans. Being non-conforming, the loans return a high rate of interest. The weighted average interest rate is 20 per cent.Standard & Poor's said one of the strengths of the pool was that only 26 per cent of borrowers had adverse credit histories. The ratings agency was less impressed by what it considered a high average loan to valuation ratio. More than 75 per cent of the loans have an LVR of 100 per cent or more (where the buyer borrows the funds for the car, the insurance and other costs). More than 90 per cent of the cars are used cars.The arranger of the Liberty deal is nabCapital. Lead managers are Macquarie Bank and nabCapital.Macquarie Bank is the lead manager, arranger and bookrunner for the SMART deal.