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10 Five Minutes With As SVP of Capital Markets, Renee Schultz manages Fannie Mae's Capital Markets Pricing and Sales Desk, MBS trading, the Credit Risk Transfer programs, Structured Transactions, and the Whole Loan Conduit. She also oversees the Securitization policy team, which ensures proper administration of matters related to the strategy and business value of Fannie Mae securities. Schultz recently spoke with DS News about last summer's rollout of the Uniform Mortgage-Backed Security, Fannie Mae's ongoing commitment to innovation, and new developments in credit risk transference. One of the biggest stories on the GSE front was the rollout of the UMBS last summer. What takeaways came out of that process? e Single Security Initiative, which has been going on for almost six years, was market transforming. We started trading forward securities in March and the official launch of the Uniform Mortgage-Backed Security was in June. It was a very smooth and orderly transition. Most of the people involved with the initiative spent six years of their life on it and saw it through all the way to completion. We were all in agreement that the worst possible outcome would be to disrupt the TBA (to- be-announced) market. If you think back to the financial crisis, the TBA market was the only market really functioning. So, to do any kind of harm to that market would have been disastrous. We needed to be confident that when we did go live it was functioning smoothly and we were not going to have any bumps in the night. We have ongoing monitoring of the securities to make sure that they are aligned so we don't have any kind of bifurcation in the market. With that years-long project now launched, where do you turn your focus now? We have a lot of different capital market initiatives, many of them focused on the customer—not just in the traditional sense of seller-servicers, but also investors. We're trying to build out some capabilities for the entire customer base. ere are some tools that we continue to build out and refine such as our Servicing Marketplace for seller-servicers. We also have a tool called Investor Direct that we've been building for investors that enables them to structure transactions. Investors don't have to pick up the phone anymore. ey have the ability to upload their collateral, and we're continuing to build on that technology. We've heard resounding positive comments from the investor community, saying that we've made it so simple for them. at's a real focus for us: we want to make things simple for the industry, and we want to bring certainty and efficiency. Is the way you interact with and get feedback from your customers changing? We work closely with a team that we call CXD, and they help us identify small groups of customers that we want to seek out for feedback. Once we have a concept we want to explore, we can run it past one of these groups—sort of a focus group—to ask, "Is this something that is of value to you?" We usually have a good sense of whether the need is there, but sometimes we'll hear back from customers that there is a more pressing need elsewhere that needs attention. "The single security initiative, which has been going on for almost six years, was market transforming. We started trading forward securities in March and the official launch of the Uniform Mortgage- Backed Security was in June. It was a very smooth and orderly transition." Renee Schultz SVP of Capital Markets, Fannie Mae Get to Know Industry Executives Beyond the Boardroom