Until recently, financial intermediaries were the only means to channel funds from national capital markets to smaller local ones. Securitization, however, now allows borrowers to enter capital markets directly. In this procedure pools of loans typically are aggregated into pass-through securities, such as mortgage pool pass-throughs. Then, investors can invest in securities backed by those pools. The transformation of these pools into standardized securities enables issuers to deal in a volume large enough that they can bypass intermediaries. We have already discussed this phenomenon in the context of the securitization of the mortgage market. Today, most conventional mortgages are securitized by government mortgage agencies.
Another example of securitization is the collateralized automobile receivable (CAR), a pass-through arrangement for car loans. The loan originator passes the loan payments through to the holder of the CAR. Aside from mortgages, the biggest asset-backed securities are for credit card debt, car loans, home equity loans, and student loans. Securitization also has been used to allow U.S. banks to unload their portfolios of shaky loans to developing nations. So-called Brady bonds (named after Nicholas Brady, former secretary of the Treasury) were formed by securitizing bank loans to several countries in shaky fiscal condition. The U.S. banks exchange their loans to developing nations for bonds backed by those loans. The payments that the borrowing nation would otherwise make to the lending bank are directed instead to the holder of the bond. These bonds are traded in capital markets. Therefore, if they choose, banks can remove these loans from their portfolios simply by selling the bonds. In addition, the United States in many cases has enhanced the credit quality of these bonds by designating a quantity of Treasury bonds to serve as partial collateral for the loans. In the event of a foreign default, the holders of the Brady bonds would have claim to the collateral.