Securitization: The Tool Of Financial Transformation

Securitization as a financial instrument has had an extremely significant impact on the world's financial system. First, by integrating capital markets and the uses of resources such as mortgage originators, finance companies, governments, etc. it has strengthened the trend towards disintermediation. Having been able to mitigate agency costs, it has made lending more efficient; evidence of this can be observed in the mortgage markets. By permitting firms to originate and hold assets off the balance sheet, it has generated much higher levels of leverage and, though arguably, greater economies of scale.