Institute for Financial Transparency

Richard Field is the Director of the Institute for Financial Transparency, an organization focused on bringing valuation transparency to all the opaque corners of the financial system and the sponsor of the Transparency Label Initiative^TM.

Since the mid-90s, he has been a leader in defining and implementing transparency in the structured finance industry. Mr. Field designed, developed and patented a low cost information system to handle all of the complexity involved in making each structured finance security transparent. His solution uses a data warehouse to provide all market participants with easily accessible, standardized collateral level data on an observable event basis over the life of each deal.

In April 2008, Mr. Field wrote a Learning Curve column for Total Securitization that described the gold standard for transparency for structured finance securities. Subsequently, he  consulted with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners on their July 2012 white paper on financing home ownership. In both of these widely read publications, he discussed the need for both timely disclosure of the underlying collateral performance information and the use of a data warehouse to capture, standardize and disseminate this data.

Apparently, while his call for timely disclosure was ignored, his call for the use of a data warehouse was heard.  In Europe, the European Central Bank championed the creation of the EU Data Warehouse to provide transparency into structured finance securities.  in the U.S., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in the process of building this data warehouse for residential mortgage-backed securities. It is called the Common Securitization Solutions LLC.  About these two data warehouses, Mr. Field remarked, as the beaver said to the rabbit looking down on the Hoover Dam, “I didn’t build it all by myself, but it is based on an idea of mine.”

Earlier in his career, he worked as an Assistant Vice President for First Bank System and as a Research Assistant at the Federal Reserve Board. Mr. Field has an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Yale University.

Bank of England:

Consultative Paper on Information Transparency for Asset-Backed Securitisations

Committee of European Bank Supervisors (CEBS):

Consultative Paper on European Capital Requirements Article 122a

European Central Bank (ECB):

Provision of ABS Loan-Level Information in the Eurosystem Collateral Framework

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC):

Safe Harbor Proposal

Safe Harbor Proposal:  Observable Event-based Reporting for Structured Finance

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC):

Proposed Revisions to Structured Finance Disclosure Requirements

Proposed Revisions to Structured Finance Disclosure Requirements II

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