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54 Since then, FHA has proceeded at a relentless pace, building a platform that supports the mission and the demands of the modern real estate finance marketplace. Led by a team of professionals within HUD's Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), FHA staff, and outside contractors, FHA constructed the new system, fittingly named "FHA Catalyst," when complete will provide a completely digital end-to-end lifecycle for FHA-insured loans. A 21ST-CENTURY UPGRADE Prior to this effort, the 85-year old agency had been known in housing circles for outdated and obsolete, systems, cumbersome processes, and lack of agility—qualities ill- suited for the modern marketplace, and even less so when called upon to act quickly during national emergencies. FHA's information technology infrastructure was fragmented, cobbled together as resources allowed, and was stubbornly stuck in the past. Funding through the years was barely enough to maintain the same antiquated systems built through a patchwork of efforts over decades. What's more, FHA's systems and processes were woefully behind those of the government- sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who had spent years and tens-of-millions reinventing their technology platforms. In many instances, FHA lenders were forced to send large documents over email, often needing to break them up to reduce file sizes, or physically mailing CDs or thumb drives. More recently, lenders have been sharing application data and documents via secure online dropbox. For aspects of FHA business that had been moved to seemingly more elegant digital solutions, in many cases they had to be paired with inefficient, Rube Goldberg-like processes on the backend in order to accommodate FHA's disparate systems. e gaps were filled with manual processes or low-tech adaptations. In short, prior to this year, lenders and servicers working with FHA faced multiple access points for a single application, with large portions of the process conducted via paper files that were shuttled between FHA's offices and lenders. None of these methods were efficient or reliable, introducing additional risks to the program. With 8.5 million active loans in a $1.3 trillion singlefamily insurance portfolio, and 1 million new endorsements and tens of thousands of claims each year, the pandemic could have severely limited FHA's capacity to serve its mission. All of that has changed or is in the process of being changed. A TECH TRANSFORMATION Late last year, after many months of hard work, FHA stood up the new platform and Cover Story By: The Hon. Brian D. Montgomery FHA's Electronic Document Delivery (EDD) dashboard reflecting nearly 70,000 electronic case binders being submitted through the new platform, "FHA Catalyst," from over 900 lenders. The rapid development and deployment of this secure EDD system on the new platform is helping FHA to continue to operate as normal during COIVD-19.

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