Congress chartered Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (the Enterprises) to provide liquidity, stability, and affordability to the U.S. housing market. While supporting mortgage lenders and investors, we are also focused on addressing housing challenges that consumers face – including those that disproportionately burden lower- and moderate-income borrowers and renters. As part of this, we continuously seek solutions to direct capital in support of such borrowers and to promote access to housing markets across the country – in alignment with our statutory mission and goals.

This motivated us in 2022 to launch the Single-Family Social Index, a creative disclosure solution that provides insights into the mission-oriented lending activities underlying our mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Since then, we collected market feedback, refined the methodology, and are now introducing updates to the disclosure, including a refreshed name, the Mission Index. We’ve also laid the groundwork for our exciting newest development – Freddie Mac’s and Fannie Mae’s aligned Single-Family Social Bond programs. 

The Next Chapter: The Mission Index

While the Mission Index name is new, the underlying concept is not. Rather, it’s an evolution of the Social Index enhanced with the help of market feedback and includes many of the same criteria as the previous version. Our focus on our mission and Duty to Serve goals through the Mission Index is intended to promote access to financing for the communities we were chartered to serve. The new name, the “Mission Index,” reflects direct feedback from investors, highlights that this is an Enterprise-specific disclosure, and helps investors better understand how our mission activities support U.S. housing. The corresponding pool-level disclosures will be renamed as the Mission Criteria Share (MCS) and Mission Density Score (MDS).  

To balance several important factors, the Mission Index:

  • Allows investors to identify MBS with high concentrations of loans that align with the Enterprises’ mission objectives.
  • Seeks to preserve the liquidity and efficiency of the single-family UMBS to-be-announced (TBA) mortgage market for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issued securities.
  • Helps to mitigate potential harm to borrower privacy by aggregating potentially sensitive data elements about a loan into rolled-up metrics.

The updated Mission Index contains ten criteria, focusing on income, borrower, and property attributes. For example, the index includes first-time homebuyers, low-income borrowers, affordable rental housing, borrowers residing in or purchasing homes in underserved markets, and manufactured housing properties. As with the previous version, the design is adaptable and allows criteria to be adjusted over time as the types of borrowers needing housing finance support evolves. Read more about our Mission Index criteria and methodology here.

Introducing Single-Family Social Bonds

Engagement with market participants indicated that we could build upon the disclosures and attempt to generate more impact through the issuance of labeled social bonds. Our Single-Family Social Bond programs will offer investors the ability to invest in single-family MBS featuring high concentrations of loans made consistent with our mission and Duty to Serve objectives, insights that are provided through the Mission Index. In turn, investor demand for these MBS may result in lenders focusing more on lending to these populations, with loans underwritten to the Enterprises’ strong credit standards. 

We worked closely with our regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to incorporate market feedback and design a durable solution, which is aligned across both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Our updated frameworks address the four components of the International Capital Markets Association Social Bond Principles. They are also each validated by an independent second party opinion.

In line with labeled Social Bond practices, the Enterprises will provide annual impact reporting to help the market understand the social impact of the loans underlying their investments. We ’re also responding to investor feedback to better understand how incremental revenue gained from labeled social bonds will be deployed. For example, with respect to whole loans the Enterprises purchase and subsequently securitize in labeled social bonds, we will provide reporting to demonstrate how any incremental revenue is being allocated to support our statutory mission requirements, such as our mission and Duty to Serve objectives.

Looking Ahead

The new Mission Index name will apply to all pools, outstanding and new issue, beginning with March 2024 issuances. The updated formulation will apply to all pools for Fannie Mae beginning with March 2024 issuances and for Freddie Mac beginning with June 2024 issuances. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae expect to assign labels to Single-Family MBS meeting the Social Bond criteria beginning in June 2024, and impact reporting for those bonds will be published in 2025.

We know there is much more to be done in supporting homeownership and access to affordable rental housing. The evolved Mission Index and the creation of a Single-Family Social Bond program are aimed to advance these efforts and attract new sources of capital. We appreciate our partners in the capital markets who have contributed to the design, and we look forward to continued feedback on this important work.

Learn More

More information about the Freddie Mac Single-Family Social MBS and Corporate Debt Bonds Framework and Mission Index is available on Freddie Mac’s website, and via the following resources:

This is not an offer to buy or sell any Freddie Mac securities. Offers for any given security are made only through applicable offering circulars and related supplements, which incorporate Freddie Mac’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); all other reports Freddie Mac files with the SEC pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act), excluding any information "furnished" to the SEC on Form 8-K; and all documents that Freddie Mac files with the SEC pursuant to Sections 13(a), 13(c) or 14 of the Exchange Act, excluding any information “furnished” to the SEC on Form 8-K.

The financial and other information contained in this document and in the documents that may be accessed through this document speaks only as of the date of those documents. The information could be out of date and no longer accurate. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae undertake no obligation, and disclaim any duty, to update any of the information in those documents.

These materials may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond the company’s control. Management’s expectations for the company’s future necessarily involve a number of assumptions, judgments and estimates, and various factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed in these and other forward-looking statements. These assumptions, judgments, estimates and factors are discussed in the company’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, and its reports on Form 10-Q and Form 8-K, which are available on the Investor Relations page of the company’s Web site at http://www.freddiemac.com/investors and the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. The company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements it makes to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this document.

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