Another Fine Mezz has a new host. Sarah Ainsworth, GlobalCapital's new securitization editor, takes over the microphone this week. Thomas Hopkins is away, so this episode is a two-hander with Tom Hall, our European ABS reporter.
September has opened as it usually does in securitization. Four deals were priced last week, three euro auto ABS and one Dutch prime RMBS, and around eight more were on screens for this week. The names are familiar: experienced issuers with three or four deals behind them. The exception is Newcastle Building Society, which is out with a UK prime RMBS, only its second deal.
Tom's cover story looked at Lloyds and its Candide Dutch prime RMBS programme. Lloyds restarted the shelf in 2024 with a single €750m deal, and did the same in 2025. This year it has placed €1.5bn across two deals. The second was priced on Friday, as the podcast was recorded, and came tighter than the February trade. It landed within a whisker of ING's Green Lion, one of the sector's gold standard shelves, after Lloyds' earlier deals had priced at the wider end of the Dutch prime range.
The broader market is having a good year. Dutch prime RMBS issuance stands at €3.6bn year to date, according to GlobalCapital's Asset Backed Monitor, against €2.75bn for the whole of 2025. Tom argues the sector's problem has always been supply rather than demand.
Lloyds was an unusual case. The deal came out of its German branch, Lloyds Bank GmbH, which securitizes Dutch mortgages and also issues German covered bonds, against them. German rules cap cover pool loans at 60% LTV, which leaves a role for RMBS with higher LTV collateral, and a big bank wants more than one funding source anyway, Tom explains.
Ahead, Tom expects at least one or two more Dutch prime deals before the market closes for the year. But until regulators treat RMBS more kindly relative to covered bonds, a return to pre-crisis volumes looks a long way off.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2001777/episodes/19765957-dutch-courage.mp3?download=true