Ginnie Mae is changing how it counts FHA Trial Payment Plan loans in issuer delinquency ratio checks, temporarily excluding them from compliance calculations starting with March 2026 reporting. The move, laid out in APM 26-06, comes after delinquency ratios rose as servicers routed more borrowers into trial plans under FHA’s updated loss mitigation rules.
Joseph Gormley said the volume of trial payment plans should normalize as the new policy matures, and Ginnie Mae said it will keep monitoring the effect of those loans on issuer delinquency performance. Loans in trial plans will still be reported as delinquent in standard monthly loan-level reporting, but they will not count as delinquent for ratio compliance purposes under the temporary change.
The shift follows FHA’s 2025 update to its single-family loss mitigation waterfall, which reinstated required trial payment plans before certain workout options, including partial claims. Under that structure, delinquent borrowers must complete a trial payment plan before receiving a final loss mitigation solution, extending the time it takes to resolve some loans. As more delinquent FHA loans were reviewed for assistance, the volume of loans in trial plan status increased.
Ginnie Mae said the higher ratios do not reflect the kind of broad credit slide that would usually show up in a surge of loans moving from current or early-stage delinquency into 90-plus-day delinquency. In its report, the agency said the data does not show such a shift and instead suggests the recent increase in reported delinquency levels for FHA loans in its pools is being driven mainly by the longer resolution timeline created by the trial payment plan requirement.
From October 2025 through February 2026, FHA delinquencies averaged 9.2% in Ginnie Mae’s March report, underscoring how the new waterfall has changed the reporting picture even as the agency says it has not seen the same kind of rapid credit deterioration that would normally explain it. Ginnie Mae said it will give at least 60 days’ notice before returning to its standard calculation through a future memorandum, and it also said it expects to review its delinquency threshold policy more broadly in the current marketplace.
For borrowers, the policy keeps the path to relief intact while changing how issuers are judged in the meantime. For Ginnie Mae, the temporary exclusion buys time for fha loans servicing data to settle into a new pattern, with the agency already signaling that it will revisit the rule once trial payment volumes return to expected levels.