Conditioned for death: Could UCF have prevented the Ereck Plancher tragedy?
ORLANDO, Fla. -- At approximately 9 a.m. on Tuesday, March 18, members of the University of Central Florida football team begin an hour-long weightlifting session.
Sometime after 10, they enter Nicholson Fieldhouse, the program's $4.1 million indoor training facility, for an off-season conditioning session. It is the squad's first workout after spring break, with spring practice scheduled to start the following day. Most of the doors to Nicholson are closed.
What happens over the course of the next half-hour or so is now largely in dispute. Few people will talk about it openly, and fewer still will offer many details.
What is known for certain is that at 10:48 a.m., shortly after the conditioning session is completed, a member of the University of Central Florida's football staff calls 911.
"Ereck! Ereck!" the person yells, as UCF police dispatch answers the call.
The person hands the phone to another member of the UCF staff, who says urgently, "We have a kid in sheer exhaustion, possibly going into cardiac arrest. So we need somebody here ASAP."
At 10:52, UCF police Sgt. Elwood "Woody" Furnas arrives on the scene to find a player unconscious, stretched out on a bench in front of Nicholson and being tended to by a team trainer.
An automated external defibrillator is attached to the player, and Furnas joins the trainer in performing CPR.
At 10:56, Orange County Fire and Rescue arrives to take over treatment. The player has no pulse and is unresponsive.
At 11:06, the player is hoisted onto a stretcher as trainers, coaches and some teammates look on, stunned. The player is still unresponsive.
At 11:09, an ambulance, carrying the player, leaves the UCF football facility to begin the nine-mile drive to Florida Hospital East. Emergency personnel continue resuscitation efforts.
At 11:21, the ambulance pulls into the hospital parking lot.
At 11:51, Ereck Michael Plancher is pronounced dead.
Nearly eight months later, the death of Plancher, a seemingly healthy and fit 19-year-old redshirt freshman wide receiver, has raised questions about the school's handling of the situation before, during and after Plancher collapsed, and also led to a possible wrongful-death lawsuit.
• Coaches and team trainers were aware Plancher suffered from an inherited condition, sickle-cell trait, that can restrict blood flow to vital parts of the body and cause serious problems during high-intensity workouts. But they didn't appear to employ precautions that had been recommended by a national athletic trainers' organization nine months before Plancher died. The group, citing nine sudden deaths among young athletes with the trait since 2000, warned of complications arising from overexertion -- particularly on the first day of training -- and suggested gradual increases in workouts, longer rest periods and immediate withdrawal with the onset of symptoms.
Plancher struggled severely at the end of the March 18 workout, and eyewitnesses say coaches and trainers were slow to respond. Two players who participated in the workout say personnel did not step in when Plancher was clearly in distress during a sprint. They also say that when they tried to help their teammate get to his feet at the end of the session, they were told to let Plancher get up on his own. He got up, still with some help, took a step, then collapsed.
• After Plancher's death, UCF coach George O'Leary and athletic department officials significantly understated the difficulty of the conditioning session in their public statements.
• Some of Plancher's teammates were afraid to discuss details of the workout for fear of losing their scholarships. Ultimately, two former players who participated in the workout agreed to speak to "Outside the Lines" on the record, though reluctantly.
• The school did not begin interviewing players about the incident until more than a month after it happened; even then, some players with relevant information were never questioned.
"They never tell us really how he died," Plancher's Haitian-born father, Enock, says. "They only tell us he collapse and died. That's all they tell us."
"Outside the Lines" first contacted UCF in May to request interviews with O'Leary, athletic director Keith Tribble, team trainers and several players. In early June, a UCF spokesman said that O'Leary and Tribble were "on board," that schedules were being checked to pick a day for the interviews and that players would be asked if they wanted to speak. Soon thereafter, the school reversed course: O'Leary wouldn't talk, and the player requests would not even be forwarded. After the Planchers filed their intent to sue Aug. 1, the school said Tribble would not be made available.
Tribble issued a statement to "Outside the Lines" last week, stating, "From what we have learned to date, our review of the March 18 workout has shown that coaches and staff acted appropriately."
There are no pictures on the walls in the Naples, Fla., home where Ereck Plancher grew up, only holes where frames once displayed the broad smile of a self-ordained "Mama's Boy." Football jerseys, socks, bed linens and other fabrics of Ereck's life are stored in boxes that have been shoved into the corner of a laundry room being remodeled. They're out of the way so Gisele Plancher can try to avoid the reality that her first-born is dead.
"That goes through my mind all day long. Every day, I have to go through that, every day," says Gisele, who was born and raised in Haiti. "
Sometimes, to tell you the truth, I don't want to live anymore."
In Ereck, the Planchers say they had the ideal child. Interviews with family, friends, teammates, pastors and coaches reflect a kid who was humble and admired by virtually anyone who came in contact with him. A big brother who not only didn't resent his baby sibling but who made sure that Edwin, nine years his junior, was regularly by his side. A God-fearing son who didn't swear, who said "Yes, sir" and "No, ma'am," who was dedicated to his studies and who didn't feel the need to pierce his body or ink it up with tattoos.
Ereck was a member of the National Honor Society at Lely High School in Naples, had earned a 3.9 grade point average there and had no problem with prioritizing: Family, religion, school, friends, and then sports (particularly football).
"The kid was just a special, special person," says Chris Metzger, who coached Plancher at Lely. "There's just no other way to put it, man. If you have daughters, you wanted them to marry Ereck."
Plancher was a special athlete at Lely. He was a first-team all-area and all-conference running back in his junior and senior years. Recruited to play wide receiver at UCF, he graduated early and enrolled in Orlando to get a head start on school and on football.
The transition to playing for O'Leary, according to many of Plancher's friends and family members, did not go smoothly. They said he was put off by O'Leary's swearing and the feeling that the coach wasn't connected in any way with his players, and he found the training sessions difficult.
In talks with friends and his former coach, Metzger, Plancher said he thought about quitting. He also mentioned that at one point, he had collapsed.
"He told me, 'It was just such an intense workout, Coach, I don't know if this is for me,'" Metzger says. "I just urged him to hang in there, that it would be OK. He just collapsed. It scared him. He had exerted himself to the point of exhaustion."
Gisele, so doting a mother that she often called Ereck as many as six times a day, says she got the feeling something wasn't right for her son in Orlando. But he never said anything to her.
On the Sunday before he died, at the end of spring break, Ereck kept putting off his 240-mile drive back to Orlando. He was supposed to leave at noon, then said he was leaving at 2. He started playing with his brother, then took a nap. At 6 p.m., Gisele woke him and told him to get going. She called him several times while he was driving.
The last time Gisele spoke with Ereck was Monday evening.
She asked about his day ("I'm doing fine, Mommy."). She asked about practice ("No, we didn't start practice today. We start tomorrow."). She told him she loved him and then said, "Remember, I will stand by you for anything."
What made her say that?
"When I talk to him, he don't seem happy," Gisele says. "I don't know; I force him to tell me but he didn't tell me. He just say, 'I'm doing fine.'"
The next morning, Tuesday, the UCF football team returned to its offseason conditioning sessions. The players lifted in the weight room for at least an hour, then moved to Nicholson Fieldhouse for conditioning.
It was 70 degrees outside at 10 a.m., with about 50 percent humidity and 9 mph winds blowing to the southeast. O'Leary, though, always had his team do agility drills in the indoor facility, according to a former player. The athletic department Web site describes Nicholson as "climate controlled by a series of industrial-size air conditioning fans located at both the north and south endzones." However, according to two former UCF players, the fans only seem to stir up the heat. One of the former players, who requested anonymity, says some members of the team nicknamed the building "The Oven."
The other player, running back James Jamison, was one of Ereck Plancher's close friends and often ran alongside him during conditioning drills. Jamison was still playing for UCF that day, as was Jevaughn Reams, a wide receiver who also later left the team.
Jamison and Reams are the first players to go on the record about what took place inside Nicholson that morning. Their stories -- aspects of which are corroborated by other players who requested anonymity -- undercut O'Leary's characterization of the workout as "not taxing," and also suggest coaches and trainers didn't respond to obvious signs Plancher was struggling.
Jamison, who offers the most vivid and specific details, says the conditioning session began as usual, with the players breaking into groups by position and participating in three different stations, spending five minutes at each. At the first station, players stood on a line, sprinted in the direction a coach pointed, then returned to the line and continued until the whistle. At the second station, they ran over some bags and weaved in and out of others. At the final station, they got on all fours, shuffled to the left, then to the right, then stood up and sprinted forward.
"We were just supposed to do that and be done," says Jamison, who has since transferred to Division II Texas A&M-Commerce. "We all went through them. [Plancher] went through them. He made it through them all. Everybody made it through, no problem; and we thought that was it.
"But then Coach O'Leary came in and he was like, 'Get me some cones and bags and set them up.'"
Jamison and Reams describe a drill with cones and bags that they had never performed before: a 100-yard obstacle course in which the players weaved through cones, ran over bags, weaved through more cones and finally did a flip onto a large mattress set up at the end. Then they sprinted back the 100 yards to the start.
The players broke into positions, and O'Leary had them perform the drill twice. Jamison says it was especially challenging.
"People who would normally be in front, never complaining about running, never getting tired, they were on the ground, cramping, throwing up and stuff," Jamison says. "
It was just something new. We weren't used to this, so everybody's body was just shutting down on them pretty much."
Jamison says his group went before Plancher's group, and he wasn't able to see how his friend performed during the obstacle course. Again, Jamison and others thought the conditioning session was done. But again, they were wrong.
O'Leary told the players to get on the line to run gassers -- sideline-to-sideline sprints, up and back, covering a total of 107 yards. Jamison was next to Plancher; and when they took off, he noticed Plancher wasn't running at normal speed. Jamison says he didn't think much of it because everybody was tired.
When they finished the first one, O'Leary called for a second gasser. This time, within steps of leaving the line, Plancher fell down. Jamison didn't stop, figuring his friend had slipped and would get up and keep running. But Plancher was slow to get up and so slow to finish that the rest of his group was done with the gasser, standing on the line and watching along with the rest of the team as Plancher struggled to complete the sprint.
"It was like he was just out of it," Jamison says. "It was like he was just running as slow as can be, like he was walking.
He was just staring. About every step he took, it was like he was about to fall over. It was literally like everybody was just looking at him, like he was pushing his body past his limit."
Finally, they were done. No trainers approached Plancher, according to Jamison and Reams. The team huddled around O'Leary as was customary at the end of workouts. Plancher was in the back of the huddle, down on one knee, struggling to his catch his breath.
According to Jamison and Reams, as well as other players who requested anonymity, O'Leary said to Plancher, "That's a bunch of bulls--- out of you, son. You're better than that."
Jamison says he was struck that O'Leary singled out Plancher, given that everyone was tired. But Reams says he didn't think much of it, suggesting it's "what coaches do."
O'Leary later denied a similar account to the Orlando Sentinel, saying he didn't swear at Plancher. He acknowledged, though, that he said Plancher was "better than that."
After O'Leary finished talking, the players broke into positions to do jumping jacks, again as was customary. Jamison says Plancher was standing by the offensive linemen, dazed, seemingly still trying to catch his breath. Somebody grabbed him and moved him over with the wide receivers.
" To demonstrate, Jamison raises his arms halfway up and flails.
When the jumping jacks were completed, the players huddled and then began to jog off the field. But almost immediately, Plancher collapsed. Jamison says he and another teammate yelled to the trainers, but no one responded.
"We were trying to pick him up and it was like his legs couldn't even stand," Jamison says. "They was like Jell-O."
Jamison says O'Leary told the players to let Plancher try to get up on his own. Reams agrees with this, though he doesn't specifically name O'Leary, saying only that "coaches and trainers" told the players to have Plancher try to get up by himself.
Jamison says he and the other teammate kept hold of Plancher's arms as he rose, but according to both Jamison and Reams, Plancher went down again.
"He tried to stand up and just wobbled and fell back down," Jamison says.
This time, Jamison and Reams say trainers rushed to Plancher. Jamison and three other players carried their 180-pound teammate out of Nicholson and laid him on a bench directly outside. It's unclear who decided to move Plancher or why the decision was made.
"We couldn't even carry him. We had to take four of us to carry him outside and lay him on the bench," Jamison says. "It was like his body was really that heavy."
Jamison says O'Leary then ordered the players back into Nicholson while trainers began working on Plancher and called 911. But Jamison says he sneaked out to watch, and saw the trainers and the police and the defibrillator and the ambulance.
"They were trying to revive him and there was nothing," Jamison says.
Asked how long the conditioning session lasted, Jamison estimates about 30-35 minutes.
When Ereck Plancher first arrived at UCF in January 2007, he, like every other football player, underwent a physical. One of the tests the school conducted revealed that he possessed sickle-cell trait -- an inherited condition that did not preclude him from participating fully in football but at the time had been linked to nine sudden deaths in young athletes since 2000. (That number is now 11).
According to lab results obtained by "Outside the Lines," a Jan. 8 blood test on Plancher by UCF showed positive for sickle-cell trait. A second test, on June 22, again identified him as positive for the trait. A school spokesman later said coaches and trainers were aware of the test results and that Plancher was informed about them, as well.
Sickle-cell trait had become a topic of growing concern among some athletic trainers, who feared that without proper education and simple precautions, there would be more deaths. One in 12 African-Americans possesses the trait, according to the Centers for Disease Control, so football teams could sometimes have several athletes with the condition.
Studies show that an athlete with sickle-cell trait can run into problems during high-intensity workouts when red blood cells change from oval to sickle-shaped. Those elongated cells can become logjammed in small blood vessels, preventing parts of the body from receiving the oxygen they need.
On June 7, 2007 -- two weeks before Plancher was screened for the trait a second time -- the condition was the focus of a warning by the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA), an organization consisting of 30,000 certified athletic trainers and other support personnel. Many of the nation's college athletic trainers are members of NATA, including the UCF staff, according to a school spokesman.
At NATA's annual convention in Anaheim, Calif., a task force issued a report and held a press conference highlighting potential dangers for athletes who carry the trait, and recommending precautions to prevent the onset of sickle-cell collapse. The committee's consensus statement and accompanying press release were posted on the NATA Web site.
A UCF spokesman said he believed the school's trainers were in attendance at the convention. It's unknown whether any UCF personnel attended the press conference or read the report.
Of particular note to the task force was that a number of the fatal cases had occurred during the first day of conditioning -- such as the one Plancher participated in nine months later -- when players are pushed to their limits, running sprints and/or doing timed testing drills.
"Sickling can begin in only 2-3 minutes of sprinting -- or in any other all-out exertion -- and sickling can quickly increase to grave levels if the stricken athlete struggles on or is urged on by the coach," read the consensus statement.
The task force suggested "simple precautions" could prevent sickling collapse, including gradual progression in workouts, additional time for rest and recovery and immediate withdrawal from training if the athlete shows symptoms, such as an inability to "catch breath" and fatigue.
"Athletes with sickle cell trait should be excluded from participation in performance tests such as mile runs, serial sprints, etc., as several deaths have occurred from participation in this setting," wrote the NATA task force.
UCF declined to offer details about steps coaches or trainers took when they learned Plancher had the trait. The school's main spokesman said, "Our trainers are aware of the guidelines regarding student-athletes and, as such, the health of our student-athletes is our top priority."
On the Web site for the Collegiate Sports Medicine Foundation, an organization that supports college athletic programs, UCF's head football athletic trainer, Mary Vander Heiden, is listed as the primary contact on a page devoted to treating athletes with sickle-cell trait.
A few hours after Plancher was pronounced dead, Tribble, the athletic director, went before the media, read from a statement and answered a few questions.
"Today is a sad day for our university, our athletic program, our fans, and the UCF community," Tribble said.
About what happened, Tribble said, "We are still in the fact-gathering process, but I can tell you what we know at this minute. Following the completion of today's offseason conditioning program, Ereck apparently took to one knee as the team departed our fieldhouse. The UCF training staff was on-site and attended to him immediately, including administering CPR."
Tribble also said the team had participated in a "basic conditioning" drill that lasted 10 minutes, and that the day's workout also had included a "weights component."
That afternoon, Nehemie Marcelin and three of Plancher's other close friends rushed to campus seeking answers. Marcelin and the others were high school pals of Plancher's back in Naples, but they had moved to the Orlando area after their friend helped them find a junior college near UCF. Upon arriving at campus, they went directly to O'Leary's office, where a secretary escorted them in to meet the coach.
Inside, Marcelin says O'Leary, joined by three assistant coaches, spent about 20 minutes with the young men, talking about what a good person their friend had been. According to Marcelin, the coach described how Plancher collapsed during practice, how medical personnel tried to help, how an ambulance was called.
O'Leary "also told us that the workout was very light," Marcelin wrote in a text message that followed an earlier in-person interview with "Outside the Lines."
Two days after Plancher died, in his first public comments about the incident, O'Leary described the conditioning session by saying, "It was not a taxing workout." He also said, "It was probably one of the shortest agility things we've had."
On March 25, executive associate athletic director David Chambers told the Orlando Sentinel that the workout actually lasted 20 minutes, with the players participating in three station-based drills. Chambers said that Tribble had misspoken -- the 10-minute time frame was the "cool down period."
"It wasn't an atypical drill or conditioning session," Chambers said.
As well, O'Leary indicated he'd seen no signs of Plancher struggling, only that he saw him fall during one of the gassers. On April 2, as UCF prepared to respond to a looming Orlando Sentinel story, a school spokesman wrote in an internal e-mail that O'Leary had described Plancher "tripping" during the last gasser. Another e-mail from a UCF spokesman says, "Ereck slipped during a drill."
On April 11, the Sentinel published a story quoting four anonymous players disputing UCF's description of the workout and saying Plancher was in distress during the session. The Sentinel said the players sought anonymity because they "fear retribution from football coaches."
This guy did nothing wrong. He just died for no reason.
Jamison tells "Outside the Lines" that he and other players were furious about the way O'Leary and Tribble described the workout.
"I've always been raised if you get in trouble, tell the truth. The truth is better than lies because you got to keep telling another lie, then another lie, then another lie, especially when it comes to somebody's life. And this guy did nothing wrong. He just died for no reason."
Asked why he thinks O'Leary and others minimized the extent of the workout when there would be nothing wrong with a coach holding a tough session, Jamison says, "The fact that they ran a player to death."
Shortly after Plancher's death, O'Leary told his players to avoid talking to the media about the incident, according to Jamison, Reams, other former players and one current player who requested anonymity. UCF employs a document titled "Catastrophic Incident Guideline," which lays out actions to be taken in the wake of an athlete's death or severe injury. Regarding responsibilities of various personnel, it calls on the head coach to "encourage other student-athletes to not discuss the incident."
The document is not clear about whether the message is for players not to talk with the media or with anyone at all. Several players say O'Leary told them not to speak to reporters about the incident, and many came to believe they could lose their scholarships if they spoke out.
Reams says he wasn't led to believe he could lose his scholarship if he spoke about the incident; but according to Jamison, a lot of players believed the message was clear that they would be breaking team rules if they spoke without first receiving permission from team personnel. Both a current player and one of his parents told "Outside the Lines" that players were fearful of losing their scholarships if they talked.
In a March 26 e-mail to a Sentinel reporter from Joe Hornstein, UCF associate athletic director in charge of communications and marketing, the athletic department spokesman wrote, "On multiple occasions, our players were strongly encouraged to speak to the coach and position coaches on anything dealing with the incident of March 18."
However, based on interviews with Jamison and others, as well as an Orlando Sentinel report, it doesn't appear the university sought information from the players about the workout until more than a month after Plancher died.
Jamison, who quit the team April 22, says he was never contacted by anyone connected with the school to discuss Plancher's death.
In his statement to "Outside the Lines," Tribble wrote, "In the past, coaches and staff have spoken repeatedly and openly about the workout. Anyone else with information has been encouraged to do the same. Unfortunately, pending litigation now limits what the university can say about this tragedy."
More than 3,000 people attended Ereck Plancher's funeral, including George O'Leary and most of the UCF football team. Jamison says he couldn't bring himself to go. It was all just too much to bear.
"Ereck Plancher did everything right," O'Leary said during the service. "In today's society, it's easy to get up and complain and whine about things. That wasn't Ereck. He came to practice every day trying to get better."
For the Planchers, those first few weeks after Ereck died were a blur, an overwhelming stream of services and sympathies and tributes. Now, though, the immediacy of it has passed, and Gisele and Enock Plancher are trying to make sense of their loss.
On July 17, the Orange County Medical Examiner released its final autopsy report. It stated that Ereck's death was linked to sickle-cell trait, which "predisposed him to sickling of the red blood cells during periods of physical stress." Two weeks later, the Planchers informed the school of their intent to sue, alleging Ereck "experienced exhaustion, dizziness, shortness of breath, and other signs of extreme fatigue that were ignored by trainers and/or coaches of the University of Central Florida." The Planchers say they hope to prevent other families from confronting the same pain they have endured.
Despite the pictures taken down from the walls and the memories packed away into boxes, Gisele still appears lost, the result, she says, of too little sleep mixed with too many tears and too much doubt and anger.
She shows a visitor a Mother's Day card Ereck gave her 10 months before he died.
It reads: "I would like to personally thank you for raising me from a boy to a young man. Even with two jobs you were always there for me mommy. And for that I would die for you or give you anything mommy, because I love and respect you so much. Thank you for everything, and I hope you know, I am where I'm at because of you. I will do everything I can to make you happy. Maybe one day I can repay you, for what you've done for me. I love you yesterday, today and forever mommy."
Says Enock, sitting in his living room next to Gisele: "I always tell her, 'You are too close to Ereck. If he die before you, you will be crazy.'"
"Yeah, he always told me that," Gisele says.
"They were too close," says Enock.
ESPN producers Lindsay Rovegno and Greg Amante contributed to this report. Mark Fainaru-Wada is a reporter for ESPN's enterprise unit. He can be reached at markfwespn@gmail.com.


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Value Opportunities in Private-Label Investor Loan Deals
The supply of investor loan collateral in private securitizations has surged in 2021 and projects to remain high (more on this below). To gain an informational edge while selecting bonds among this new issuance, traders and investors have asked RiskSpan for data and tools to dissect the performance of investor Read More..
https://riskspan.com/value-opportunities-in-private-label-investor-loan-deals/
The supply of investor loan collateral in private securitizations has surged in 2021 and projects to remain high (more on this below). To gain an informational edge while selecting bonds among this new issuance, traders and investors have asked RiskSpan for data and tools to dissect the performance of investor loans. Below, we first show the performance of investor loans compared to owner-occupied loans, and then offer a glimpse into a few relative value opportunities using our data and analytics platform, Edge.
As background, the increase of investor loan collateral in PLS was spurred by a new FHFA policy, recently suspended, that capped GSE acquisitions of investor and second home loans at 7% of seller volume. This cap forced originators to explore private-label securitization which, while operationally more burdensome than GSE execution, has been more profitable because it bypasses the GSEs' high loan-level pricing adjustments. Now that this difficult but rewarding PLS path has been more widely traveled, we expect it to become more efficient and to remain popular, even with the GSE channel reopening.
Subsector Performance Comparison: Investor Vs. Owner-Occupied Loans
Investor Loans Promise Longer Collection of Above-Market Rates
Compared to owner-occupants, investors have historically paid above-market mortgage rates for longer periods before refinancing. Figure 1 shows the prepayment rates of investors vs. owner-occupants as a function of refinance incentive (the borrower's note rate minus the prevailing mortgage rate). As their flatter "s-curve" shows, the rise in investor prepayments as refinance incentive increases is much more subdued than for owner-occupants.
Crucially, this relationship is not fully explained by higher risk-based pricing premiums on investor loans. Figure 2 shows the same comparison as Figure 1 but only for loans with spreads at origination (SATO) between 50 and 75 bps. The categorical difference between owner-occupied and investor prepay speeds is partially reduced but clearly remains. We also tried controlling for property type, but the difference persists. The relative slowness of investors may result from investors spreading their attention across many elements of their P&L besides interest expense, from higher underwriting obstacles for a rental income-driven loan, and/or from lenders limiting allocation of credit to the investor type.
While we plot these graphs over a five-year lookback period to balance desires for recency and sample size, this relationship holds over shorter and longer performance periods as well.
Figure 1: The Investor Loans S-Curve is Significantly Flatter Than the Owner-Occupied Curve
Investor s-curve vs. owner-occupied s-curve. Includes prime credit, no prepayment penalty, original loan size $200K-$400K, ages 6-48 months for the past 5yr period performance.
Source: CoreLogic's Private-Label RMBS Collateral Dataset, RiskSpan. Note: because the increase in private-label investor loan volume is coming from Agency cutbacks, the historical performance of investor loans within both Agency and private-label datasets are relevant to private-label investor loan future performance. In this analysis we show private-label data because it straightforwardly parses voluntary prepays vs. defaults, which of course is a critical distinction for PL RMBS investors. Nonetheless, where applicable, we have run the analyses in both datasets, each of which corroborates the performance patterns we show.
Figure 2: Even Controlling for SATO, The Investor vs. Owner-Occupied S-Curve Difference Persists
Same as Figure 1 but includes only loans with SATO between 50-75 bps Source: CoreLogic, RiskSpan
Investor Loans Pose Comparable Baseline Risk, Greater Downside Risk to Credit Investors
Credit performance of investor loans has been worse than owner-occupied loans during crises, which justifies a pricing premium. During benign periods, investor loans have defaulted at similar or lower rates than owner-occupied loans – presumably due to more conservative LTVs, FICOs and DTIs among the investor loan type – and have therefore been profitable for credit investors during these periods. See Figure 3.
Figure 3: Investor Loans Have Defaulted at Greater Rates During Crises and Similar Rates in Other Periods vs. Owner-Occupied Loans
Default rates over time, investor loans vs. owner-occupied. Includes prime credit, ages 12-360 months.
Source: CoreLogic, RiskSpan
Relative Value Opportunities Within Investor Loans
California Quicker to Refinance
California has the largest share of U.S. investor mortgages, as it does with all residential mortgages. California borrowers, both investors and owner-occupieds, have exhibited a steeper response to refinance incentives than have borrowers in other states. Figure 4 shows the comparison focusing on investors. While historical home price appreciation has enabled refinances in California, it has done the same in many states. Therefore, the speed differences point to a more active refinance market in California. All else equal, then, RMBS investors will prefer less California collateral.
Figure 4: California Prepays Significantly Faster In the Money
Investor s-curves bucketed by geography (California vs. Other). Includes prime credit, no prepayment penalty, original loan size $200k-$400k, ages 6-48 months for the past 3yr performance period.
For AAA Investors, Limited-Doc Investor Loans May Offer a Two-Sided Benefit: They Buoy Premium Bonds, and a Small Sample Suggests They Lift Discount Bonds, Too
Limited-doc investor loans offer senior tranche holders the chance to earn above-market rates for longer than full-doc investor loans, a relative edge for premium bonds (Figure 5). This is intuitive; we would expect limited-doc borrowers to face greater obstacles to refinancing. This difference holds even controlling for spread at origination. Based on a smaller sample, limited-doc investor loans have also turned over more (see greater prepay rates in the negative refinance incentive bucket). This may result from a correlation between limited documentation and more rapid flipping into the rising HPI environment we have had nationally throughout the past seven years. If so, this would mean that limited-doc investor loans also help discount bonds, relative to full-doc investor loans, accelerate repayments at par.
Because limited-doc investor loans are rare in the RMBS 2.0 era, we widened the performance period to the past seven years to get some sample in each of the refinance incentive buckets. Nonetheless, with all the filters we have put on to isolate the effect of documentation type, there are only a few hundred limited-doc investor loans in the negative refinance incentive buckets.
Figure 5: Limited-Doc Investor Loans Have Prepaid Slower In-The-Money and Faster Out-of-the-Money
Investor s-curves bucketed by doc type. Includes prime credit, no prepayment penalty, original loan size $400K-$800K, ages 6-48 months, SATO 25-125bps for the past 7yr performance period.
Size Affects Refi Behavior – But Not How You Think
An assumption carried over from Agency performance is that rate-driven prepays get likelier as loan size increases. This pattern holds across conforming loan sizes, but then reverses and refinance response gets flatter again as balances cross $800K. This is true for investor and owner-occupied loans in both Agency and private-label loan data, though of course the number of loans above $800K in the Agency data is small. Figure 6 shows this pattern for private-label investor loans. As shown, in-the-money prepayments are slowest among loans below $200K, as we would expect. But despite their much higher motivation to refinance, loans above $800K have similar S-curves to loans of just $200K-$400K.
The SATO is generally a few basis points higher for these largest loans, but this does not explain away the speed differences. Figure 7 shows the same comparison as Figure 6 except only for loans with SATO between 50-75 bps. Except for a slightly choppier graph because of the reduced sample size, the same rank-ordering is evident. Nor does controlling for property type or geography remove the speed differences. The largest loans, we conclude, have fewer credit alternatives and/or face more stringent underwriting hurdles than smaller loans, hampering their refi rates.
Rate refinances are fastest among the mid-sized loans between $400K-$600K and $600K-$800K. That these last two groups have similar S-curves – despite the greater dollar motivation to refinance for the $600K-$800Kgroup – suggests that the countervailing effect of lower ability to find refinancing outlets is already kicking in for the $600K-$800K size range.
All of this means that high-balance collateral should be more attractive to investors than some traditional prepayment models will appreciate.
Figure 6: The Largest Investor Loans Refinance Slower Than Medium-Sized
Investor s-curves bucketed by loan size. Includes prime credit, no prepayment penalty, ages 6-48 months for the past 5yr performance period.
Figure 7: Controlling For SATO, Largest Investor Loans Still Refinance Slower Than Medium-Sized
Same as Figure 4 but includes only loans with SATO between 50-75 bps
Preliminarily, Chimera Has Lowest Stressed Delinquencies of Top Investor Shelves
For junior-tranche, credit-exposed investors in the COVID era, 60-day-plus delinquencies have been significantly rarer on Chimera's shelf than on other top investor shelves. The observable credit mixes of the three shelves appear similar. We ran this analysis with only full-doc loans and from only one state (California), and the rank-ordering of delinquency rates by shelves remains the same. Further to this point, note that the spread at origination of Chimera's shelf is nearly as high as Flagstar's. All of this suggests there is something not directly observable about Chimera's shelf that has generated better credit performance during this stressed period. We caution that differences in servicer reporting of COVID forbearances can distort delinquency data, so we will continue to monitor this performance as our data updates each month.
Figure 8: Chimera Posts Lowest COVID Delinquencies, with Nearly Highest SATO of Top Investor Shelves
Investor DQ60+ rates over time, bucketed by shelf. Includes prime credit, ages 12-60 months.
The Greater Default Risk of Low-Doc Investor Loans Lasts About 10 Years
Low-doc investors default more frequently than full-doc investors, but only during the first roughly 120 months of loan age. Around this age, the default rates converge. For loans seasoned beyond this age, full-doc loans begin to default slightly more frequently than low-doc loans, likely due to a survivorship bias. This suggests that credit investors are wise to require a price discount for new issuance with low-doc collateral. For deals with heavily seasoned collateral, junior-tranche investors may counterintuitively prefer low-doc collateral — certainly if they can earn an extra risk premium for it, as it would seem they are not actually bearing any extra credit risk.
Figure 9: Low-Doc Investor Loans Default More Frequently Than Full-Doc Until Loan Age = 120
Investor default rates over time, bucketed by doc type. Includes prime credit, RMBS 2.0 era, for the past 7yr performance period.
Investor loans face higher barriers to refinance than owner-occupied, offering RMBS investors the opportunity to earn higher coupons for longer periods.
For junior tranche investors, the credit performance of investor loans has been similar to owner-occupied loans during benign economic periods and worse during stressed times.
California borrowers respond more quickly to refinance incentives than borrowers from other states; investors will prefer less California collateral.
Limited-doc investor loans offer AAA investors a double benefit: slower refinances in the money, extending premium bonds; and faster turnover out of the money, limiting extension risk.
Low loan balances are attractive for their slow refinance response – as are non-conforming (high) loan balances above $800K. Traditional prepay models may miss this latter dynamic.
For credit investors, Chimera's delinquency rates have been significantly better during the pandemic than other investor shelves. We will continue to monitor this as different ways of reporting COVID forbearances may confound such comparisons.
For credit investors, limited-doc investor loans default at higher rates than full-doc loans for about the first ten years of loan age; after this point the two perform very similarly, with limited-doc loans defaulting at slightly lower rates among these seasoned loans, likely due to survivor biases.
Contact us if you are interested in seeing variations on this theme. Using Edge, we can examine any loan characteristic and generate an S-curve, aging curve, or time series.
An Emerging Climate Risk Consensus for Mortgages?
That climate change poses a growing—and largely unmeasured—risk to housing and mortgage investors is not news. As is often the case with looming threats whose timing and magnitude are only vaguely understood, increased natural hazard risks have most often been discussed anecdotally and in broad generalities. This, however, is beginning Read More..
https://riskspan.com/an-emerging-climate-risk-consensus-for-mortgages/
That climate change poses a growing—and largely unmeasured—risk to housing and mortgage investors is not news. As is often the case with looming threats whose timing and magnitude are only vaguely understood, increased natural hazard risks have most often been discussed anecdotally and in broad generalities. This, however, is beginning to change as the reality of these risks becomes increasingly clear to an increasing number of market participants and industry-sponsored research begins to emerge.
This past week's special report by the Mortgage Bankers Association's Research Institute for Housing America, The Impact of Climate Change on Housing and Housing Finance, raises a number of red flags about our industry's general lack of preparedness and the need for the mortgage industry to take climate risk seriously as a part of a holistic risk management framework. Clearly this cannot happen until appropriate risk scenarios are generated and introduced into credit and prepayment models.
One of the puzzles we are focusing on here at RiskSpan is an approach to creating climate risk stress testing that can be easily incorporated into existing mortgage modeling frameworks—at the loan level—using home price projections and other stress model inputs already in use. We are also partnering with firms who have been developing climate stress scenarios for insurance companies and other related industries to help ensure that the climate risk scenarios we create are consistent with the best and most recently scientific research available.
Also on the short-term horizon is the implementation of FEMA's new NFIP premiums for Risk Rating 2.0. Phase I of this new framework will begin applying to all new policies issued on or after October 1, 2021. (Phase II kicks in next April.) We wrote about this change back in February when these changes were slated to take effect back in the spring. Political pressure, which delayed the original implementation may also impact the October date, of course. We'll be keeping a close eye on this and are preparing to help our clients estimate the likely impact of FEMA's new framework on mortgages (and the properties securing them) in their portfolios.
Finally, this past week's SEC statement detailing the commission's expectations for climate-related 10-K disclosures is also garnering significant (and warranted) attention. By reiterating existing guidelines around disclosing material risks and applying them specifically to climate change, the SEC is issuing an unmistakable warning shot at filing companies who fail to take climate risk seriously in their disclosures.
Contact us (or just email me directly if you prefer) to talk about how we are incorporating climate risk scenarios into our in-house credit and prepayment models and how we can help incorporate this into your existing risk management framework.
Prepayment Spikes in Ida's Wake – What to Expect
It is, of course, impossible to view the human suffering wrought by Hurricane Ida without being reminded of Hurricane Katrina's impact 16 years ago. Fortunately, the levees are holding and Ida's toll appears likely to be less severe. It is nevertheless worth taking a look at what happened to mortgages Read More..
https://riskspan.com/prepayment-spikes-in-idas-wake-what-to-expect/
It is, of course, impossible to view the human suffering wrought by Hurricane Ida without being reminded of Hurricane Katrina's impact 16 years ago. Fortunately, the levees are holding and Ida's toll appears likely to be less severe. It is nevertheless worth taking a look at what happened to mortgages in the wake of New Orleans's last major catastrophic weather event as it is reasonable to assume that prepayments could follow a similar pattern (though likely in a more muted way).
Following Katrina, prepayment speeds for pools of mortgages located entirely in Louisiana spiked between November 2005 and June 2006. As the following graph shows, prepayment speeds on Louisiana properties (the black curve) remained elevated relative to properties nationally (the blue curve) until the end of 2006.
Comparing S-curves of Louisiana loans (the black curve in the chart below) versus all loans (the green curve) during the spike period (Nov. 2005 to Jun. 2006) reveals speeds ranging from 10 to 20 CPR faster across all refinance incentives. The figure below depicts an S-curve for non-spec 100% Louisiana pools and all non-spec pools with a weighted average loan age of 7 to 60 months during the period indicated.
The impact of Katrina on Louisiana prepayments becomes even more apparent when we consider speeds prior to the storm. As the S-curves below show, non-specified 100% Louisiana pools (the black curve) actually paid slightly slower than all non-spec pools between November 2003 and October 2005.
As we pointed out in June, a significant majority of prepayments caused by natural disaster events are likely to be voluntary, as opposed to the result of default as one might expect. This is because mortgages on homes that are fully indemnified against these perils are likely to be prepaid using insurance proceeds. This dynamic is reflected in the charts below, which show elevated voluntary prepayment rates running considerably higher than the delinquency spike in the wake of Katrina. We are able to isolate voluntary prepayment activity by looking at the GSE Loan Level Historical Performance datasets that include detailed credit information. This enables us to confirm that the prepay spike is largely driven by voluntary prepayments. Consequently, recent covid-era policy changes that may reduce the incidence of delinquent loan buyouts from MBS are unlikely to affect the dynamics underlying the prepayment behavior described above.
RiskSpan's Edge Platform enables users to identify Louisiana-based loans and pools by drilling down into cohort details. The example below returns over $1 billion in Louisiana-only pools and $70 billion in Louisiana loans as of the August 2021 factor month.
Edge also allows users to structure more specified queries to identify the exposure of any portfolio or portfolio subset. Edge, in fact, can be used to examine any loan characteristic to generate S-curves, aging curves, and time series. Contact us to learn more.
RiskSpan Named to Inaugural STORM50 Ranking by Chartis Research – Winner of "A.I. Innovation in Capital Markets"
Chartis Research has named RiskSpan to its Inaugural "STORM50" Ranking of leading risk and analytics providers. The STORM report "focuses on the computational infrastructure and algorithmic efficiency of the vast array of technology tools used across the financial services industry" and identifies industry-leading vendors that excel in the delivery of Read More..
https://riskspan.com/chartis-research-storm50-winner/
Chartis Research has named RiskSpan to its Inaugural "STORM50" Ranking of leading risk and analytics providers. The STORM report "focuses on the computational infrastructure and algorithmic efficiency of the vast array of technology tools used across the financial services industry" and identifies industry-leading vendors that excel in the delivery of Statistical Techniques, Optimization frameworks, and Risk Models of all types.
RiskSpan's flagship Edge Platform was a natural fit for the designation because of its positioning squarely at the nexus of statistical behavioral modeling (specifically around mortgage credit and prepayment risk) and functionality enabling users to optimize trading and asset management strategies. Being named the winner of the "A.I. Innovation in Capital Markets" solutions category reflects the work of RiskSpan's vibrant innovation lab, which includes researching and developing machine learning solutions to structured finance challenges. These solutions include mining a growing trove of alternative/unstructured data sources, anomaly detection in loan-level and other datasets, and natural language processing for constructing deal cash flow models from legal documents.
Learn more about the Edge Platform or contact us to discuss ways we might help you modernize and improve your mortgage and structured finance data and analytics challenges.
Climate Terms the Housing Market Needs to Understand
The impacts of climate change on housing and holders of mortgage risk are very real and growing. As the frequency and severity of perils increases, so does the associated cost – estimated to have grown from $100B in 2000 to $450B 2020 (see chart below). Many of these costs are Read More..
https://riskspan.com/climate-terms-the-housing-market-needs-to-understand/
The impacts of climate change on housing and holders of mortgage risk are very real and growing. As the frequency and severity of perils increases, so does the associated cost – estimated to have grown from $100B in 2000 to $450B 2020 (see chart below). Many of these costs are not covered by property insurance, leaving homeowners and potential mortgage investors holding the bag. Even after adjusting for inflation and appreciation, the loss to both investors and consumers is staggering.
Properly understanding this data might require adding some new terms to your personal lexicon. As the housing market begins to get its arms around the impact of climate change to housing, here are a few terms you will want to incorporate into your vocabulary.
Natural Hazard
In partnership with climate modeling experts, RiskSpan has identified 21 different natural hazards that impact housing in the U.S. These include familiar hazards such as floods and earthquakes, along with lesser-known perils, such as drought, extreme temperatures, and other hydrological perils including mudslides and coastal erosion. The housing industry is beginning to work through how best to identify and quantify exposure and incorporate the impact of perils into risk management practices more broadly. Legacy thinking and risk management would classify these risks as covered by property insurance with little to no downstream risk to investors. However, as the frequency and severity increase, it is becoming more evident that risks are not completely covered by property & casualty insurance.
We will address some of these "hidden risks" of climate to housing in a forthcoming post.
Wildland Urban Interface
The U.S. Fire Administration defines Wildland Urban Interface as "the zone of transition between unoccupied land and human development. It is the line, area, or zone where structures and other human development meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland or vegetative fuels." An estimated 46 million residences in 70,000 communities in the United States are at risk for WUI fires. Wildfires in California garner most of the press attention. But fire risk to WUIs is not just a west coast problem — Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania are among the top five states at risk. Communities adjacent to and surrounded by wildland are at varying degrees of risk from wildfires and it is important to assess these risks properly. Many of these exposed homes do not have sufficient insurance coverage to cover for losses due to wildfire.
National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA)
The National Flood Insurance Program provides flood insurance to property owners and is managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Anyone living in a participating NFIP community may purchase flood insurance. But those in specifically designated high-risk SFPAs must obtain flood insurance to obtain a government-backed mortgage. SFHAs as currently defined, however, are widely believed to be outdated and not fully inclusive of areas that face significant flood risk. Changes are coming to the NFIP (see our recent blog post on the topic) but these may not be sufficient to cover future flood losses.
Transition Risk
Transition risk refers to risks resulting from changing policies, practices or technologies that arise from a societal move to reduce its carbon footprint. While the physical risks from climate change have been discussed for many years, transition risks are a relatively new category. In the housing space, policy changes could increase the direct cost of homeownership (e.g., taxes, insurance, code compliance, etc.), increase energy and other utility costs, or cause localized employment shocks (i.e., the energy industry in Houston). Policy changes by the GSEs related to property insurance requirements could have big impacts on affected neighborhoods.
Physical Risk
In housing, physical risks include the risk of loss to physical property or loss of land or land use. The risk of property loss can be the result of a discrete catastrophic event (hurricane) or of sustained negative climate trends in a given area, such as rising temperatures that could make certain areas uninhabitable or undesirable for human housing. Both pose risks to investors and homeowners with the latter posing systemic risk to home values across entire communities.
Livability Risk
We define livability risk as the risk of declining home prices due to the desirability of a neighborhood. Although no standard definition of "livability" exists, it is generally understood to be the extent to which a community provides safe and affordable access to quality education, healthcare, and transportation options. In addition to these measures, homeowners also take temperature and weather into account when choosing where to live. Finding a direct correlation between livability and home prices is challenging; however, an increased frequency of extreme weather events clearly poses a risk to long-term livability and home prices.
Data and toolsets designed explicitly to measure and monitor climate related risk and its impact on the housing market are developing rapidly. RiskSpan is at the forefront of developing these tools and is working to help mortgage credit investors better understand their exposure and assess the value at risk within their businesses.
Why Mortgage Climate Risk is Not Just for Coastal Investors
When it comes to climate concerns for the housing market, sea level rise and its impacts on coastal communities often get top billing. But this article in yesterday's New York Times highlights one example of far-reaching impacts in places you might not suspect. Chicago, built on a swamp and virtually Read More..
https://riskspan.com/mortgage-climate-risk-chicago/
When it comes to climate concerns for the housing market, sea level rise and its impacts on coastal communities often get top billing. But this article in yesterday's New York Times highlights one example of far-reaching impacts in places you might not suspect.
Chicago, built on a swamp and virtually surrounded by Lake Michigan, can tie its whole existence as a city to its control and management of water. But as the Times article explains, management of that water is becoming increasingly difficult as various dynamics related to climate change are creating increasingly large and unpredictable fluctuations in the level of the lake (higher highs and lower lows). These dynamics are threatening the city with more frequency and severe flooding.
The Times article connects water management issues to housing issues in two ways: the increasing frequency of basement flooding caused by sewer overflow and the battering buildings are taking from increased storm surge off the lake. Residents face increasing costs to mitigate their exposure and fear the potentially negative impact on home prices. As one resident puts it, "If you report [basement flooding] to the city, and word gets out, people fear it's going to devalue their home."
These concerns — increasing peril exposure and decreasing valuations — echo fears expressed in a growing number of seaside communities and offer further evidence that mortgage investors cannot bank on escaping climate risk merely by avoiding the coasts. Portfolios everywhere are going to need to begin incorporating climate risk into their analytics.
Hurricane Season a Double-Whammy for Mortgage Prepayments
As hurricane (and wildfire) season ramps up, don't sleep on the increase in prepayment speeds after a natural disaster event. The increase in delinquencies might get top billing, but prepays also increase after events—especially for homes that were fully insured against the risk they experienced. For a mortgage servicer with Read More..
https://riskspan.com/hurricane-season-a-double-whammy-for-mortgage-prepayments/
As hurricane (and wildfire) season ramps up, don't sleep on the increase in prepayment speeds after a natural disaster event. The increase in delinquencies might get top billing, but prepays also increase after events—especially for homes that were fully insured against the risk they experienced. For a mortgage servicer with concentrated geographic exposure to the event area, this can be a double-whammy impacting their balance sheet—delinquencies increase servicing advances, prepays rolling loans off the book. Hurricane Katrina loan performance is a classic example of this dynamic.
RiskSpan's Edge Platform Wins 2021 Buy-Side Market Risk Management Product of the Year
RiskSpan, a leading SaaS provider of risk management, data and analytics has been awarded Buy-Side Market Risk Management Product of the Year for its Edge Platform at Risk.net's 2021 Risk Markets Technology Awards. The honor marks Edge's second major industry award in 2021, having also been named the winner of Read More..
https://riskspan.com/riskspans-edge-platform-named-2021-buy-side-market-risk-management-product-of-the-year/
RiskSpan, a leading SaaS provider of risk management, data and analytics has been awarded Buy-Side Market Risk Management Product of the Year for its Edge Platform at Risk.net's 2021 Risk Markets Technology Awards. The honor marks Edge's second major industry award in 2021, having also been named the winner of Chartis Research's Risk-as-a-Service category.
Licensed by some of the largest asset managers and Insurance companies in the U.S., a significant component of the Edge Platform's value is derived from its ability to serve as a one-stop shop for research, pre-trade analytics, pricing and risk quantification, and reporting. Edge's cloud-native infrastructure allows RiskSpan clients to scale as needs change and is supported by RiskSpan's unparalleled team of domain experts — seasoned practitioners who know the needs and pain points of the industry firsthand.
Adjudicators cited the platform's "strong data management and overall technology" and "best-practice quant design for MBS, structured products and loans" as key factors in the designation.
Edge's flexible configurability enables users to create custom views of their portfolio or potential trades at any level of granularity and down to the loan level. The platform enables researchers and analysts to integrate conventional and alternative data from an impressive array of sources to identify impacts that might otherwise go overlooked.
For clients requiring a fully supported risk-analytics-as-a-service offering, the Edge Platform provides a comprehensive data analysis, predictive modeling, portfolio benchmarking and reporting solution tailored to individual client needs.
An optional studio-level tier incorporates machine learning and data scientist support in order to leverage unstructured and alternative datasets in the analysis.
Contact us to learn how Edge's capabilities can transform your mortgage and structured product analytics.
Learn more about Edge at https://riskspan.com/edge-platform/
The Why and How of a Successful SAS-to-Python Model Migration
A growing number of financial institutions are migrating their modeling codebases from SAS to Python. There are many reasons for this, some of which may be unique to the organization in question, but many apply universally. Because of our familiarity not only with both coding languages but with the financial Read More..
https://riskspan.com/sas-to-python-migration/
A growing number of financial institutions are migrating their modeling codebases from SAS to Python. There are many reasons for this, some of which may be unique to the organization in question, but many apply universally. Because of our familiarity not only with both coding languages but with the financial models they power, my colleagues and I have had occasion to help several clients with this transition.
Here are some things we've learned from this experience and what we believe is driving this change.
Python Popularity
The popularity of Python has skyrocketed in recent years. Its intuitive syntax and a wide array of packages available to aid in development make it one of the most user-friendly programming languages in use today. This accessibility allows users who may not have a coding background to use Python as a gateway into the world of software development and expand their toolbox of professional qualifications.
Companies appreciate this as well. As an open-source language with tons of resources and low overhead costs, Python is also attractive from an expense perspective. A cost-conscious option that resonates with developers and analysts is a win-win when deciding on a codebase.
Note: R is another popular and powerful open-source language for data analytics. Unlike R, however, which is specifically used for statistical analysis, Python can be used for a wider range of uses, including UI design, web development, business applications, and others. This flexibility makes Python attractive to companies seeking synchronicity — the ability for developers to transition seamlessly among teams. R remains popular in academic circles where a powerful, easy-to-understand tool is needed to perform statistical analysis, but additional flexibility is not necessarily required. Hence, we are limiting our discussion here to Python.
Python is not without its drawbacks. As an open-source language, less oversight governs newly added features and packages. Consequently, while updates may be quicker, they are also more prone to error than SAS's, which are always thoroughly tested prior to release.
Visualization Capabilities
While both codebases support data visualization, Python's packages are generally viewed more favorably than SAS's, which tend to be on the more basic side. More advanced visuals are available from SAS, but they require the SAS Visual Analytics platform, which comes at an added cost.
Python's popular visualization packages — matplotlib, plotly, and seaborn, among others — can be leveraged to create powerful and detailed visualizations by simply importing the libraries into the existing codebase.
SAS is a command-driven software package used for statistical analysis and data visualization. Though available only for Windows operating systems, it remains one of the most widely used statistical software packages in both industry and academia.
It's not hard to see why. For financial institutions with large amounts of data, SAS has been an extremely valuable tool. It is a well-documented language, with many online resources and is relatively intuitive to pick up and understand – especially when users have prior experience with SQL. SAS is also one of the few tools with a customer support line.
SAS, however, is a paid service, and at a standalone level, the costs can be quite prohibitive, particularly for smaller companies and start-ups. Complete access to the full breadth of SAS and its supporting tools tends to be available only to larger and more established organizations. These costs are likely fueling its recent drop-off in popularity. New users simply cannot access it as easily as they can Python. While an academic/university version of the software is available free of charge for individual use, its feature set is limited. Therefore, for new users and start-up companies, SAS may not be the best choice, despite being a powerful tool. Additionally, with the expansion and maturity of the variety of packages that Python offers, many of the analytical abilities of Python now rival those of SAS, making it an attractive, cost-effective option even for very large firms.
Many of the expected advances in data analytics and tech in general are clearly pointing toward deep learning, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in general. These are especially attractive to companies dealing with large amounts of data.
While the technology to analyze data with complete independence is still emerging, Python is better situated to support companies that have begun laying the groundwork for these developments. Python's rapidly expanding libraries for artificial intelligence and machine learning will likely make future transitions to deep learning algorithms more seamless.
While SAS has made some strides toward adding machine learning and deep learning functionalities to its repertoire, Python remains ahead and consistently ranks as the best language for deep learning and machine learning projects. This creates a symbiotic relationship between the language and its users. Developers use Python to develop ML projects since it is currently best suited for the job, which in turn expands Python's ML capabilities — a cycle which practically cements Python's position as the best language for future development in the AI sphere.
Overcoming the Challenges of a SAS-to-Python Migration
SAS-to-Python migrations bring a unique set of challenges that need to be considered. These include the following.
Memory overhead
Server space is getting cheaper but it's not free. Although Python's data analytics capabilities rival SAS's, Python requires more memory overhead. Companies working with extremely large datasets will likely need to factor in the cost of extra server space. These costs are not likely to alter the decision to migrate, but they also should not be overlooked.
The SAS server
All SAS commands are run on SAS's own server. This tightly controlled ecosystem makes SAS much faster than Python, which does not have the same infrastructure out of the box. Therefore, optimizing Python code can be a significant challenge during SAS-to-Python migrations, particularly when tackling it for the first time.
SAS packages vs Python packages
Calculations performed using SAS packages vs. Python packages can result in differences, which, while generally minuscule, cannot always be ignored. Depending on the type of data, this can pose an issue. And getting an exact match between values calculated in SAS and values calculated in Python may be difficult.
For example, the true value of "0" as a float datatype in SAS is approximated to 3.552714E-150, while in Python float "0" is approximated to 3602879701896397/255. These values do not create noticeable differences in most calculations. But some financial models demand more precision than others. And over the course of multiple calculations which build upon each other, they can create differences in fractional values. These differences must be reconciled and accounted for.
Comparing large datasets
One of the most common functions when working with large datasets involves evaluating how they change over time. SAS has a built-in function (proccompare) which compares datasets swiftly and easily as required. Python has packages for this as well; however, these packages are not as robust as their SAS counterparts.
In most cases, the benefits of migrating from SAS to Python outweigh the challenges associated with going through the process. The envisioned savings can sometimes be attractive enough to cause firms to trivialize the transition costs. This should be avoided. A successful migration requires taking full account of the obstacles and making plans to mitigate them. Involving the right people from the outset — analysts well versed in both languages who have encountered and worked through the pitfalls — is key.
What The FHFA's Forbearance Announcement Means for Agency Prepayments
On Tuesday, the market received a modicum of clarity around Agency prepayments amid the uncertainty of COVID-19, when the FHFA released new guidelines for mortgage borrowers currently in forbearance or on repayment plans who wish to refinance or buy a new home. Borrowers that use forbearance will most likely opt Read More..
https://riskspan.com/what-the-fhfas-forbearance-announcement-means-for-agency-prepayments/
On Tuesday, the market received a modicum of clarity around Agency prepayments amid the uncertainty of COVID-19, when the FHFA released new guidelines for mortgage borrowers currently in forbearance or on repayment plans who wish to refinance or buy a new home.
Borrowers that use forbearance will most likely opt for a forbearance deferment, which delays the missed P&I until the loan matures. The FHFA announcement temporarily declares that borrowers are eligible to refinance three months after their forbearance ends and they have made three consecutive payments under their repayment plan, payment deferral option, or loan modification."
With the share of mortgage loans in forbearance accelerating to over 8 percent, according to the MBA, and retail mortgage interest rates remaining at historically low levels, the FHFA's announcement potentially expands the universe of mortgages in Agency securities eligible for refi. However, mortgage rates must be sufficiently low as to make economic sense to refinance both the unpaid principal balance of the loan and the deferred payments, which accrue at 0%. We estimate that a 6-month forbearance means that rates must be an additional 25bp lower to match the same payment savings as a borrower who doesn't need to refinance the deferred payments. In turn, this will slow refinancing on loans with a forbearance deferment versus loans without forbearance, when faced with the same refinancing incentive. This attenuated refi activity is on top of the three-payment delay after forbearance is over, which pushes the exercise of the call option out three months and lowers the probability of exercise. In total, loans in forbearance will both be slower and have better convexity than loans not in forbearance.
Today's FHFA release also extends Fannie's and Freddie's ability to purchase single-family mortgages currently in forbearance until at least August 31, 2020.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Gąska zielonka (Tricholoma equestre (L.) P. Kumm.) – gatunek grzybów należący do rodziny gąskowatych (Tricholomataceae).

Systematyka i nazewnictwo
Pozycja w klasyfikacji według Index Fungorum: Tricholoma, Tricholomataceae, Agaricales, Agaricomycetidae, Agaricomycetes, Agaricomycotina, Basidiomycota, Fungi.

Po raz pierwszy takson ten zdiagnozowany został w 1753 r. przez K. Linneusza, który nadał mu nazwę Agaricus equestre. Obecną, uznaną przez Index Fungorum nazwę nadał mu P. Kumm. w 1871 r.

Ma ok. 20 synonimów. Niektóre z nich:

Nazwę polską nadał Józef Jundziłł w 1830 r. W polskim piśmiennictwie mykologicznym ma też inne nazwy: bedłka zielonka, gąska żółta i prośnianka.

Morfologia
 Kapelusz
Średnicy 4–10 cm, żółtozielony lub żółtobrązowy, pośrodku ciemniejszy, gładki, w młodym owocniku stożkowato wypukły, później płaski, często różnie powyginany. Skorka naga lub drobnołuskowata, mazista i dlatego często z ziarnami piasku, podczas wilgoci śliska.
 Blaszki
Od bladożółtawych do siarkowożółtych, średnio gęste, cienkie, wycięte z ząbkiem, ale u nasady szeroko przyrośnięte.
 Trzon
Osiąga długość od 3 do 9 cm i grubość do 3 cm. Jest cylindryczny, pełny. Powierzchnia najpierw z podłużnymi włóknami, później gładka, żółta albo żółtozielonkawa.
 Miąższ
Twardy, kruchy, biały, po przekrojeniu nie zmienia zabarwienia. Smak słodkawoorzechowy, pachnie jak świeżo zmielona mąka.
 Wysyp zarodników
Biały. Zarodniki o średnicy 6-8 × 3,5-5 µm, jajowate, gładkie, bezbarwne.

Występowanie i siedlisko
Gąska zielonka rozprzestrzeniona jest szeroko w Ameryce Północnej i Europie, ale podana też została z niektórych miejsc w Azji (Japonia), Ameryce Środkowej (Kostaryka) i Afryki. W Polsce gatunek rzadki. Znajduje się na Czerwonej liście roślin i grzybów Polski. Ma status I – gatunek o nieokreślonym zagrożeniu. Znajduje się na listach gatunków zagrożonych także w Niemczech, Holandii, Słowacji. W krajach, gdzie jest gatunkiem zagrożonym – zabroniony jest zbiór tego gatunku.

Rośnie od października do grudnia, w borach sosnowych na piaszczystej glebie z dużą ilością porostów, prawie zawsze gromadnie, czasami razem z gąską niekształtną (Tricholoma portentosum). Prawie cały rozwój owocnika przebiega pod ziemią, z mchu i igliwia wystaje zwykle tylko część kapelusza, dlatego też trudno ją znaleźć; miejscami jest częsta.

Znaczenie
Grzyb mikoryzowy. Dawniej uważany za smaczny grzyb jadalny, jednak obecnie nie poleca się jego zbioru, w wielu krajach (np. Francja i Niemcy) uznany za toksyczny i niebezpieczny. We Francji w latach 2001–2003 odnotowano liczne przypadki zatruć, z tego kilka śmiertelnych. W kraju tym zaczęło dochodzić do coraz częstszych przypadków zatruć po spożyciu gąski zielonej, najprawdopodobniej z powodu skażenia środowiska. Na obszarach o środowisku skażonym zaleca się spożywanie tego gatunku w ograniczonych ilościach. W roku 2009 udokumentowano zatrucie zielonkami w Polsce u trzech osób, z tego jedno śmiertelne. O podstawowy mechanizm zatrucia podejrzewa się rabdomiolizę, która uszkadza błony komórkowe mięśni szkieletowych. W rezultacie tego białko mioglobina przenoszące tlen do mięśni jest uwalniane i pojawia się w moczu, co prowadzi do objawów takich jak ból mięśni i brązowawe zabarwienie moczu.

Mimo wszystkich kontrowersji z nią związanych, zgodnie z rozporządzeniem z dnia 12 czerwca 2018 r. jest grzybem dopuszczonym do obrotu handlowego na terenie Polski.

Przeprowadzony przez polskich naukowców krytyczny przegląd badań klinicznych i eksperymentalnych wskazujących na rzekomą toksyczność gąski zielonki podkreśla jednak stanowczo, iż gatunek ten nie stanowi większego zagrożenia dla zdrowia aniżeli gatunki grzybów bezsprzecznie uznawane za jadalne, a opisy przypadków zatruć i badań w modelu doświadczalnym cechuje szereg ograniczeń interpretacyjnych.

Gatunki podobne
 trująca gąska siarkowa (Tricholoma sulphureum), która ma żółty miąższ, rzadkie blaszki i nieprzyjemny zapach,
 gąska zielonożółta (Tricholoma sejunctum), która ma kapelusz bardziej oliwkowoszary i występuje głównie w lasach liściastych,
 śmiertelnie trujący muchomor zielonawy (Amanita phalloides ); podobne są zwłaszcza młode okazy. Muchomor różni się obecnością pochwy u nasady trzonu, wysokim trzonem i wolnymi blaszkami.

Przypisy

Gąskowate
Grzyby jadalne
Mykobiota Polski

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Rachel Glowacki started her fitness journey back in 1999 (YES…you can hum to Prince) teaching group fitness classes beginning with step/floor aerobics (AFAA) then to Body Pump (Les Mills) and discovered along the way she would fall in love with yoga in the early 2000's, although exposed to yoga in the 90's as a way to heal from an eating disorder (she thought yoga was weird)! But when she stepped on her mat, she felt like she was born again into a new body, a clear mind, a calm heart, a connection to not only herself, but also with God. The yoga mat became like a cathedral for her inner Catholic little girl, mountain pose became the steeple, camel became the pew, and child pose became her body prayer. She was becoming at ease with her mind, body, and spirit, where she naturally went to receive her 200hr. yoga teacher training in 2008 from a Christ centered perspective. She believes that the time-honored tradition of yoga can stoke the internal flame of the Divine within wherever you are on your faith journey.
She currently floats from studios, online classes, conferences to churches and schools teaching both adults and children, that our breath is the greatest gift to increase peace in our mind and body. Rachel is the author of Kids Yogaverse: I AM LOVE digital storybook app written specifically for the screens of iPads, Barnes and Noble Nooks, Android tablets and XO tablets for One-Laptop per child. This storybook app was "Highly Recommended" for the healthy app choice in 2012 by the U.S. Surgeon General. She is also the co-author of of two kids yoga apps: I AM ENERGY and I AM SUN, I AM MOON. Rachel's work has been featured in MINDBODYGREEN, Parents Magazine, Elephant Journal,Parenting Magazine, K-12 YOGA, CBS DreamTeam's, Chicken Soup for the Soul's Hidden Heroes Television Series, Chosen Women's Conference, The National Kids Yoga Conference and Mindfulness Month for Kids and Families.


Dive Sport is the Wholesales and retails of dive equipments in Bali.
Our Products: Scubapro, Uwatec, Subgear, BARE, Pelican cases, Catalina Cylinder, Luxfer cylinder , BAUER Compressors , GoPro Cameras and Accessories.
Dive Sport supported with certified Technician and fully equiped service center and provide a good after sales services.
Jl. By Pass Ngurah Rai No 25 B, Sanur – Bali.
Pertokoan Sanur Arcade Kav 7.
If you are looking for the leading brands in diving & snorkeling equipment in Bali, along with value for money and excellent customer service, Dive Sport is the place to come.
SCUBAPRO Technician Training Courses 2018.
Level 1 : Tuesday, 27 th November – Wednesday,28 th November.
Level 2 : Thursday, 29 th November – Friday,30 th November.
Location of Training: Dive Sport Bali.
Address:Jalan By Pass Ngurah Rai 25 B,Sanur,Bali.
Level 1 Content: Non-Balanced regulator systems – MK2 EVO R 095, BPI (Balanced power inflator),Gauge ,BCD and Dive Computers battery changes.
The program covers the theory and mechanical operation of Scubapro dive equipment, including related dive physics, repair, test and service skills and procedures.
Pre requisite: Dive Instructor or Service Technician.
Duration: 09:00 (Sharp ) -18:00.
Certificate: Upon successful completion of the program, participants will receive a SCUBAPRO certificate authorizing them to perform technical servicing on SCUBAPRO equipment covered during the training under the supervision of an authorized SCUBAPRO dealer.
Training Material: Participants will receive a full set of manuals and schematics from us.
purchase / own at least one set of the listed tools before servicing any equipment.
Course Fee Level 1: Rp 1.800.000/Person.
Course Fee Level 2: Rp 2.000.000/Person.
Course Fee Level 1 and 2 : Rp 3.000.000/Person.
We are starting a new air fill services and tank rentals including on spot delivery around Bali Area(Sanur,Padang Bai,Candidasa,Amed,Tulamben,Purijati ,Pemuteran and West National Park).
Inspection are welcome at anytime.
Our Hyper Clean production air and cost efficiency for air fill operation comes with huge investment of equipment and expert know-how. This is the core capability and assets of Dive Sport at Sanur and Singaraja.
Air Quality Monitoring System in real time.
under 25 mg per M3 of air Real Time.
Carbon Monoxide ( CO ), always ZERO PPM >> Monitored using CO Meter. Real Time.
Carbon Dioxide ( CO2 ), under 500 PPM >> Monitored using CO2 Meter. Real Time.
Prevention is by using double pass huge filters Before and after filter change.
We believe in real time monitoring.
From 1st hour to last hour of filter life, you are assured of the best breathing air quality in Indonesia.
We invite you to inspect Dive Sport air fill system and challenge its processed air quality to any air fill operators in Indonesia. Dive Sport processed air quality will be above all the rest.
Sanur Airfill center:Jl. By Pass Ngurah Rai 25B Sanur-Bali.
Singaraja Airfill center:Jl. Raya Air Sanih, Gg Melati .Br Kajekangin.Kubutambahan.


text:
Metal RoofingRoofing Project Profiles
Colorful Panels Envelop Humane Society
By Byron Smith
As the first LEED Gold certified animal shelter in the nation, the new Humane Society Silicon Valley (HSSV) Animal Community Center in Milpitas, CA proves that even our four-legged friends can enjoy the benefits of sustainability.
The $25 million, 48,000-square-foot HSSV facility was completed in March 2009. It spans nearly five acres and was funded through public donations. Its "L" shaped site plan encourages a sense of community as it organizes the building's many public entrances around a common entry space. For more than 80 years, HSSV has served Silicon Valley and has helped to find homes for more than 500,000 animals. The new building will facilitate improved care for animals, as it offers cage-less habitats and a wide variety of pet and community services. Its features include a spay/neuter center, a veterinary hospital, a dog park with a training center, boarding and grooming, doggie daycare, a community education center, an event space, a pet store and a pet-friendly café. The new space is large enough to accommodate up to 10,000 animal adoptions a year, but manages a minimal environmental impact.
Energy Efficient Features
Built with LEED in mind, the new shelter offers a host of eco-friendly features. The building has an extensive onsite solar energy generation system, which generates 40 percent of its energy needs from renewable resources. Its HVAC system features heat recovery wheels that capture and reuse heating and cooling during air ventilation cycles, which not only promotes energy savings, but also limits the spread of illness. It has a highly-efficient kennel cleansing system to minimize water usage, and stained concrete flooring to reduce the need for chemical cleaning. The center has onsite bioswales to remove pollution from rainwater runoff, and artificial turf in the dog park areas to lower irrigation water demand. Finally, the entire facility is enveloped in nearly 1,000 square feet of brightly colored and highly reflective metal panels, provided by Metal Sales Manufacturing Corporation.
Cool Building Envelope
Metal Sales' 7/8" Corrugated, 24 gauge panels surround the new facility, offering a long-lasting sustainable exterior with a vibrant aesthetic. Five colors were chosen to bring visual interest to the structure, including PVDF Kynar 500 Copper Penny, Tahoe Blue, Terra Cotta, Hemlock Green and Jade Green. Like all colors, these are ENERGY STAR listed, signifying that they have been proven to substantially contribute to energy savings due to their high solar reflectivity.
To meet ENERGY STAR certification qualifications, a material coating is measured for its solar reflectance (SR). This refers to the fraction of the incident solar energy that is reflected by a given surface using spectrophotometric measurements. An integrating sphere determines the reflectance at each different wavelength.Then, an averaging process reveals the average reflectance by using a standard solar spectrum. Higher numbers on the index indicate higher solar reflectivity, and thus more energy efficiency. The index ranges from 0 to 1 (or 0 percent to 100 percent), where 0 indicates the least reflective material, and 1 is most reflective. To achieve an ENERGY STAR certification, colors must reach a minimum of .25 on the scale. As one of the more distinguished standards, the California Energy Commission's Building Energy Efficiency Standard, Title 24, requires that materials must have a solar reflectance of up to .20, depending on the climate zone.
Cool building materials are also measured for their thermal emittance, which is defined by the Cool Roof Rating Council as the relative ability of a surface to radiate heat that is absorbed. Title 24 requires that materials must have a thermal emittance of up to .75, depending on the climate zone.
Another characteristic of panel performance is the Solar Reflectance Index (SRI), which is a measure of a material's ability to reject solar heat. SRI is based on the Solar Reflectance and the Thermal Emittance. Standard black materials have a rating of 0 and standard white materials have a rating of 100. For a LEED credit, materials must reach an SRI of at least 29.
The panels on the HSSV Animal Community Center fulfill all of the criteria for the various standards, respectively achieving the following indexes:
Copper Penny: SR .45, Thermal Emittance .85
Tahoe Blue: SR .30, Thermal Emittance .86
Terra Cotta: SR .39, Thermal Emittance .85
Hemlock Green: SR .36, Thermal Emittance .85
Jade Green: SR .31, Thermal Emittance .86
"We are proud to offer sustainable products to our customers," says Byron Smith, West Region Vice President for Metal Sales. "We understand that facility owners and project teams are doing their best to engage in green building, and we want to assist in that effort. The Humane Society Silicon Valley highlights this commitment because Metal Sales was able to provide five different paint options that are all environmentally beneficial."
In addition to their sustainability benefits, the colorful metal paneled exterior provides a cheerful environment for employees, volunteers and community members to enjoy.
"The metal panels look beautiful and the facility owners are very pleased with the final results," says Rich Palmer, Vice President of Kodiak Roofing and Project Manager of the HSSV Animal Community Center. "They installed exactly as planned, which is crucial when sticking to a tight construction schedule."
Sustainable Facility - Better Care
With its LEED Gold certification, the HSSV Animal Community Center not only has a positive impact on the environment, but the measures taken also facilitate better care for the animals. Improved airflow will minimize kennel cough and respiratory infection. The facility's space-efficient design, coupled with the use of high-quality materials, will reduce noise and thus improve animal sleeping quality and stress levels. The advanced kennel cleansing will ensure proper disinfecting with minimal interruption to animals' habitats and minimal use of water.
Perhaps the HSSV will serve as a positive role model to other facility builders around the nation, as it proves that going green is good for every member of the animal kingdom.
The project team for the HSSV consisted of architect Swatt Miers, Emeryville, CA, installer Kodiak Roofing, Lincoln, CA, and general contractor Robert L. Brown Construction, Martinez, CA.
KEYWORDS: building envelope ENERGY STAR sustainability
Byron Smith is the West Region vice president for Metal Sales.
A Special Building Envelope for the Special Forces: Cannon Air Force Base's New Facility Utilizes Metal Panels
The Greenest School in Utah: New Rooftop Solar Panels Provide Energy for Elementary School
Denver Botanic Gardens: Cement Composite Panels Form Roof and Walls of Science Pyramid
Metal Panels Inc.
Metal Panels Inc. is a quality manufacturer of metal roofing and siding products, meeting the need of the Metal Roofing, Metal Building, and Post-Frame industry since 2001. MPI offers a wide selection of exposed-fastener and standing seam panels, custom trim, and a full line of accessories. Locally owned and operated, MPI maintains manufacturing and distribution centers in Tulsa and Kansas City.
Petersen, a Carlisle company, manufactures PAC-CLAD architectural metal cladding products in multiple gauges of steel and aluminum, including standing seam roof panels, hidden- and exposed-fastener wall panels, soffit panels, perforated metal, coil and flat sheet, fascia, coping and composite panels. All are available in 70% PVDF finish in 46 standard colors.
Lakefront Roofing and Sheet Metal Supply
Lakefront Roofing Supply is an ANSI-SPRI ES1-Certified, custom sheet-metal shop offering cornice work and all types of roofing, siding, and custom sheet metal designs. Seamless gutter delivery with 5" and 6" runoff machines in the same truck including matching accessories. Most colors in stock aluminum and 16oz copper. All of our pre-painted metals are Kynar-500 coated 24-gauge steel. We also stock McElroy, Firestone, Metal Sales, Fabral, Petersen, Carlisle and Drexel. Standing Seam roof panels with 2 profiles in multiple colors. Job-site rolloff available. Now stocking Siplast and Duralast. Only stocking distributor in Chicago!


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Incodia
Gift Cards & Packaging
Loyalty & Membership
Earth Cards®
Digital Content Cards & Packaging
Social Compliance Policy
1. About this policy
1.1 Employees of Incodia International limited (hereinafter referred to as the "Company"), represent the Company and are expected to act in a manner that will enhance its reputation. This policy applies to all persons working for us or on our behalf in any capacity, including; employees at all levels, directors, officers, agency workers, seconded workers, volunteers, interns, agents, contractors, external consultants, third party representatives and business partners (collectively referred to as "Employees").
1.2 Social Compliance is a continuing process in which organisations endeavour to protect the health and safety and rights of; employees, the community in which we operate, the environment in which we operate and the lives and communities of workers in our supply and distribution chains. The Association of Professional Social Compliance Auditors define Social Compliance as "Looking at wages and benefits, labour rights, discrimination against gender or vulnerable groups, health and emergency planning". Social Compliance may also be referred to as sustainability, which includes ethics (or the treatment of people and animals), the environment, and the economy.
2. Objective
2.1 The objective of the social compliance audit is to ensure that:
(a) Working conditions are in compliance with local country laws and Incodia's compliance standards
(b) No serious infractions are being committed by locations that produce Incodia or it's clients products or materials.
2.2 In the event that local country laws are different from the Incodia compliance standards, Incodia expects all locations to meet whichever is more stringent.
2.3 Our Social Compliance Policy aims to improve both our social and environmental impact in the communities that we do business with throughout the world. While Incodia recognizes that there are different legal and cultural environments in which we operate throughout the country, the company's Social Compliance Policy sets forth the basic requirements all locations must meet in order to do business. Incodia strongly encourages contractors, agents, and suppliers to exceed the Code of Conduct requirements and to promote best practices and continuous improvement throughout. Our goal is to use the Code of Conduct and audit results as an integral part of our supply chain strategy, influencing how we work now and in the future.
3.1 This procedure applies to all Employees of the Company.
4.1 Incodia ensures the following for all employees:
(a) Compensation & Benefits: Incodia and it's associates shall provide wages, overtime compensation and benefits at not less than the minimum levels required by applicable laws and regulations or which are consistent with the prevailing local industry levels, whichever is higher. If local laws do not provide for overtime pay, suppliers will pay at least regular wages for overtime work.
(b) Working Hours: Incodia and it's associates shall maintain employee work hours in compliance with the local standards and applicable laws of the jurisdictions. If local and/nor national regulations regarding the number of maximum overtime hours that may be worked by individual workers do not exist, then the working hours should not regularly exceed 60 hours per week consisting of a maximum of 48 hours of regular hours and 12 hours of overtime. One day off in every seven days should be given. Incodia will not use suppliers who regularly require workers to work hours in excess of the statutory requirements.
(c) Child Labour: Incodia respects the right of children to development and education. Exploitation of child labour is totally unacceptable. No person shall be employed at an age younger than the legal minimum age for working, 16 years of age. Employment of any individual below 16 years of age is strictly prohibited. In general, all employees under the age of 18 must: not be employed in hazardous work; must not work night shifts; and are entitled to more breaks than adults.
(d) Forced Labour: The use of forced or involuntary labour will not be tolerated by Incodia. Incodia will not work with suppliers who directly or indirectly use in any manner forced labour, indentured labour, bonded labour or prison labour.
(e) Human Trafficking: Incodia shall maintain and commit to maintaining a work environment that is free from human trafficking. Incodia will not tolerate employment practices that include the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons or through the use of force or the threat of force or through other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or by giving or receiving payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation.
(f) Non-discrimination, Harassment & Disciplinary Practice: Incodia recognizes that cultural differences exist and different practices apply in various jurisdictions; however, the terms and conditions of employment should be based on an individual's ability to do the job, not on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, age, physical ability, national origin, or any other protected characteristic. Workers should be treated with respect and dignity. In terms of disciplinary practices, they should be fair, arbitrary and effective. Employees of Incodia and it's clients must not be exposed to physical punishment, threats of violence or physical, sexual, psychological or verbal harassment or maltreatment.
(g) Freedom of Association: Incodia and it's associates should respect the rights of their employees to choose to associate with or not associate with or to establish any lawful organization including labour organizations.
(h) Health & Safety: Incodia and it's associates must provide their employees with safe and healthy working environment, and where provided, a safe and healthy living environment. They shall comply with all applicable worker safety laws and regulations which includes: Building Integrity, Occupational Safety, Occupational Injury & Illness, Emergency Preparedness, Machine Safeguarding, Chemical Safety, Sanitation, Food & Dormitory.
(i) Environmental: Incodia and it's associates shall comply with all applicable environmental laws and regulations. This shall include having processes in place to ensure compliance with those regulations relating to the handling, recycling, and disposal of dangerous or hazardous materials. Incodia favours suppliers and customers that share its commitment to sustainable business practices.
(j) Security: Incodia and it's associates will maintain adequate security at all production and warehousing facilities and implement supply chain security procedures designed to prevent the introduction of non-manifested cargo into outbound shipments. Each Supplier facility must have written security procedures to document proof of adequate security controls.
(k) Gift & Gratuity Policy: Incodia employees are prohibited from soliciting or accepting any gifts, gratuities or other monetary incentives that are designed to improperly influence business decisions or as a condition of doing business. Employees have an affirmative duty to report any such request or demand immediately to Incodia. Certain business courtesies are not prohibited. Employees may accept gifts that are infrequent and nominal in value so long as the receipt of these gifts does not suggest a conflict of interest or give the appearance of an improper attempt to influence business decisions. We expect our employees to adhere to these gift giving guidelines.
5. Consequences
5.1 Failure to comply with the above procedures may result in disciplinary action and legal action being taken wherever appropriate.
Document Classification: Public
Version: V2
Approval Date: 24th April 2020
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© 2021 INCODIA INTERNATIONAL LTD.
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Botswana star Ngele awaits documents from SA Home Affairs – ABSA Premiership 2017/18 – Mamelodi Sundowns
Mogakolodi Ngele of Bidvest Wits challenged by Bandile Shandu of Maritzburg United during the Absa Premiership 2016/17 match between Maritzburg United and Bidvest Wits at Harry Gwala Stadium, Pietermaritzburg South Africa on 20 December 2016 ©Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix
Austin Ditlhobolo
Tuesday Aug 15, 2017. 14:00
Mamelodi Sundowns have released a statement concerning some of their foreign players including Botswana international Mogakolodi Ngele.
The 26-year-old forward has returned to the South African Premier Soccer League (EPL) giants following a successful loan spell with Bidvest Wits.
The midfielder-cum-striker helped Wits clinch the 2016 MTN8 Cup and 2016/17 ABSA Premiership last season during his stint with the South African club.
Ngele and Zimbabwean international Cuthbert Malajila, who also spent last season on loan at Wits, are still waiting for their South African permanent residency papers.
Sundowns, who lost 1-0 to Maritzburg United in the 2017 MTN8 Cup quarter-final match in Pretoria, released a statement on their official website.
A club statement read: "Dennis Onyango is out sick, while Ricardo Nascimento is still recovering from a groin operation.
"Mogakolodi Ngele and Cuthbert Malajila are still waiting for their permanent residency papers.
"Ghanaian goalkeeper Razak Brimah is awaiting his ITC papers from Spain."
Ngele has spent five years in South Africa plying his trade in the PSL. He joined Platinum Stars from Botswana giants Township Rollers in 2012.
He signed for Sundowns in 2014 after playing an important role as Stars won the 2013 MTN8 Cup and 2013 Telkom KnockOut Cup.
This entry was posted in Africa and tagged 201718, ABSA, Affairs, awaits, Botswana, documents, home, Mamelodi, Ngele, Premiership, SA, star, Sundowns. Bookmark the permalink.
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