Here in Boston, we've had a busy but productive week since the CREFC June Convention culminated – punctuated with more than a million hockey fans witnessing a parade of Duck Boats waddle through the Back Bay. The Convention itself saw a smaller (albeit similarly excitable) parade of lenders, borrowers, servicers and other industry participants descend on Manhattan for two days of networking, learning and discussion.

Indeed, the theme for the affair - On the Road Again - was apt and matched the overarching zeitgeist present in the lobby of the Waldorf. With perhaps $50b in insurance company lending and $40b in expected CMBS issuance expected by year's end, the industry is back to work in earnest. While eager issuers looked to a return of larger deals, cautious investors expressed some concern of perceived weakening in underwriting standards. Participants discussed the impact of this past spring's roll-out of CREFC's CMBS 2.0 market standards - a comprehensive initiative to provide consensus on Annex A, a standardized framework for loan underwriting principals, an expanded investor reporting package, a model set of CMBS representations and warranties and an efficient, workable model for dispute resolution when the reps go bad. (One particularly frequent topic of discussion was when (and if) issuers would widely adopt the form reps and warrants).