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20 The Exchange Dave Worrall leads a team of seasoned loan servicers to not only add value to their clients' servicing needs but also help them turn bad situations with borrowers into good ones. Prior to joining LoanCare, Worrall was President of RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing Corporation. He has also held senior leadership roles in loan servicing at Citigroup, Fannie Mae, and GMAC-RFC. While at Fannie Mae, he worked directly with the Department of the Treasury on the Making Home Affordable programs. Worrall earned his Master of Business Administration from Texas A&M University and was a Ford Distinguished Scholar while he attended. He also holds a bachelor's degree in English from Florida State University. Worrall spoke with DS News on how he is applying his previous experience to the current COVID-19 situation and how to interact with struggling borrowers. You were a VP in a national servicing organization at Fannie Mae just as the housing crisis began. What lessons did you take away from that experience that can be applied to the current situation? I thought I'd seen it all back then, and what I realize now is that that was likely good practice for what we're going through right now. It was very different back in 2006 and 2007 when things started to evolve into what became the crisis and the key difference was that there wasn't a lot of infrastructure for dealing with issues like we're experiencing now with the coronavirus. ere were not established programs. ere was little coordination between agencies, servicers, federal government authorities, and as things devolved, there was a little bit of a scramble for everybody to organize and deal with the crisis. What's been very heartening this time around with the coronavirus is because of the crisis and the response that we all worked through then, and then you certainly have to think about what seems to be now an annual natural disaster that we all have to deal with, I think we're all very practiced at responding to these kinds of events. We have established programs with the GSEs and as a result, the service and community is very ready to respond and offer assistance to customers, and probably as important to make sure that our partners, like the agencies and the government, are informed about what's going on with the borrower community. e important lessons from back then are just coordination, communication, and everybody working together to respond quickly. It is much easier now, because of everything that was put in place back in 2008 and then again as we've gone through these cycles of natural disasters over the last few years. What policies and procedures should servicers be reexamining now in expectation of upcoming economic turmoil and possible increased default rates? I think what we're going to find, and unfortunately, it's likely going to be a hindsight issue, is that this is going to be a very different disaster. In contrast to what I just said, where there's a little bit of comfort that we have the infrastructure in place, and we can all lean on the tracks we've built to handle hurricanes, and even some of the things that are still in place from when we all dealt with the crisis. is is a problem of very different attributes. It's national. ere's no clear beginning and end, at least at this point. It affects all industries. "The important lessons from back then are just coordination, communication, and everybody working together to respond quickly." Dave Worrall President, LoanCare Get to Know Industry Executives Beyond the Boardroom