The incentive is to prevent future defaults, the banks are trying to get ahead of the next bust because its more equitable in the long run to keep people in their homes rather than having unmovable properties bleeding their books.
Unless or until that borrower gets fully employed again, they will default.
Without relief in the monthly cash hemorrhage, any refinance is a meaningless gesture.
It will not avoid the inevitable default. The new paperwork would only give the bank the clear title they don't have with the existing bundled and commodity traded mortgages.
It is a perfectly valid method for the banks to decouple the "good" mortgages from the "bad" mortgages they acquired in the commodity bundles.
It also converts some of the bad (unclear chain of ownership) mortgages into ones with a clear chain of ownership, enabling foreclosures when and where needed.