Description
Pursuant to the authority at FAR Subpart 5.203(a) and in accordance with FAR 6.302-1, this notice serves as the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) notice of intent to negotiate on a sole source basis with Experian Consumer Information Solutions, Inc. (Experian) of Costa Mesa, CA, for the continued acquisition of a loan-level, nationally representative mortgage dataset and survey administration support as part of the NMDB® Project. The NMDB® is a joint project between FHFA and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The NMDB® Project is comprised of three components: (1) the NMDB®; (2) the information used to create the NMDB®, but that will not be contained within the NMDB®; and (3) the National Survey of Mortgage Originations and the American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers. The NMDB® Project is designed to satisfy the Congressionally-mandated requirements of section 1324(c) of the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992, as amended by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) Under this statutory provision, FHFA must, through surveys of the mortgage market, collect information on the characteristics of individual mortgages, including those that are eligible for purchase by the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) as well as those that are not, and subprime and nontraditional mortgages, including information on the creditworthiness of those borrowers sufficient to determine whether they would have qualified for prime lending. FHFA, awarded via competitive procedures, a contract to Experian on September 27, 2012, for the development and initial administration of the NMDB®. Under this contract, Experian has provided FHFA loan-level, nationally representative credit bureau data on first-lien mortgages. FHFA requires Experian to conduct a blind matching process through a firewall of the administrative data to the credit data. Experian tracks the actual borrower(s) and the mortgage associated with those borrower(s) monthly and then provides the de-identified information to FHFA. FHFA and CFPB are only provided a de-identified database-specific constructed loan identifier and encrypted unique personal identification number (PIN) for each mortgage included in the NMDB® and all individuals associated with that mortgage. Construction of the NMDB® began with a random sample of all first lien mortgages in the credit repository's files dating back to July 2001. Each quarter, a random 1-in-20 sample of mortgages that are reported to the credit repository is added. Experian drew this sample using a proprietary methodology. Experian has assigned a mortgage transaction to one and only one borrower. Other credit bureaus using identical data would not identify the same borrower as being associated with a specific mortgage trade line, thus resulting in a different sample frame. Given the above, the upfront cost of creating an historical PIN merge file with a new vendor would be prohibitively expensive. This historical PIN merge file would need to be recreated from data archives dating back to 2001. This would require opening 43 monthly archives from 2001 through 2016 (two per year from 2001 through 2012, and quarterly beginning September 2012) to: 1) maintain currency of selected consumers, 2) identify retrospective consumer references to enhance sampled consumer list; 3) retrieve credit trade line data on sampled consumers; and 4) summarize historical sampled consumer references that have data present in archives. Credit data would need to be pulled, credit scores computed, address data appended, etc., from each of these archives. Total cost is estimated to be between $2.5 and $4 million to recreate the historical PIN merge file. FHFA would also incur significant additional costs and delays to the project to accommodate working with an entirely different data structure and data definitions and codes. All production programs (12 main programs with approximately 4,000 lines of code) would need to be re-written to work with data files from either of the two other credit bureaus, since each credit bureau uses proprietary data structures, data codes and data definitions. FHFA has estimated that this effort would require at least one full time person for one year to perform this task. More information about the NMDB® may be found at: https://www.fhfa.gov/PolicyProgramsResearch/Programs/Pages/National-Mortgage-Database.aspx In accordance with FAR 5.207(c)(16)(ii), vendors that feel they can meet the Government's requirement may submit a capability statement which shall be considered by the agency. A determination by the Government not to open the requirement to competition based on responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. The Government anticipates a one-year performance period and up to nine one-year option periods. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this requirement is 561450, Credit Bureaus. The small business size standard is $15.0M. The Government intends to conduct the procurement on a sole source basis using Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 12, Acquisition of Commercial Items, procedures in conjunction with FAR Part 15 Contracting by Negotiation procedures. This is not a solicitation for competitive response. A solicitation is not available. Written expressions of interest with detailed capability and qualifications statement demonstrating experience and expertise in the areas detailed above will be considered by FHFA if submitted to the Contracting Officer not later than April 25, 2017 at noon Eastern Time.