By pooling their resources and underwriting as much as 60% of a film's budget, the distributors get access to a slate of films that U.S. studios typically would handle themselves.
With paper-based applications and manual processes, smaller-value business loans cost as much to underwrite as bigger-value loans.
Much of North America's settlement was initially underwritten as a business venture.
So for the incumbents, the issue is more about integrating disparate sources of data and systematizing the risk assessment and underwriting processes as much as possible.
One reason a cash-out might look good now is that for 2008 Congress has increased the size of loans Fannie and Freddie can underwrite from $417,000 to as much as $729,000 in high-cost areas.
To the Hezbollah leader, the role of the group is underwritten by Islamic teachings, just as much as it is dictated by modern strategic realities.
Merrill Lynch was by far the biggest issuer, underwriting $54 billion last year, almost twice as much as in 2005, according to Asset-Backed Alert, a trade publication.
Bob Seiwert, of the Center for Commercial Lending and Business Banking at the American Bankers Association, says "stringent underwriting standards" will require as much work as larger loans, making these even less economical.
An initial offering is the most lucrative type of underwriting, leaving investment banks with as much as 7percentt of the money raised from investors.
Automated underwriting can cost a tenth as much and be done once a human reviews the software's recommendation.Insurers' interest in data mining will only grow, says Kevin Pledge, the boss of Insight Decision Solutions, an underwriting-technology consultancy based near Toronto.
