The Reserve Bank of India, RBI, Friday revised guidelines for mortgage guarantee companies, MGCs, and stated in a notification that guarantees provided by them may be treated as contingent liabilities, for which credit conversion factor would be 50 per cent.The revision of guidelines on mortgage guarantee companies came after RBI received representations from the industry. As per the extant guidelines, MGCs have to provide for a lower appropriation to contingency reserves if provisions made towards losses exceeded 35 per cent of the premium or fee earned during a financial year, but it does not specify the exact level of such contingency reserves.An MGC may now utilise contingency reserves without prior RBI approval for the purpose of meeting and making good losses suffered by mortgage guarantee holders.However, such a measure can be initiated only after exhausting all other avenues and options to recoup losses.