At the same time, S&P released its Australian RMBS arrears statistics for October 2009 and reported a slight rise in arrears of more than 30 days to 1.27 per cent of outstanding prime RMBS, up from 1.25 per cent in September. This is the first increase in arrears since January 2009. No explanation is offered for this but it is worth noting that while the absolute volume of arrears fell by more than A$5 million, the total value of RMBS fell by more than A$2 billion over the month.One can only conclude that the number of borrowers experiencing difficulty hasn't significantly changed over the month of October but those borrowers that weren't experiencing difficulty were taking advantage of the low interest rate environment to pay down their mortgages quickly. It's also worth noting that the volume of outstanding prime RMBS had fallen below A$100 billion, the lowest level since May 2004.Arrears on low-doc prime RMBS followed the same trend while arrears on sub-prime RMBS dropped to 11.2 per cent in October 2009, from 11.49 per cent in September. Arrears of 90 days or more, at 7.19 per cent, are the lowest seen since May 2008.There has been no new issuance of sub-prime (or non-conforming) paper since the original credit crunch emerged in 2009.