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19 cutting-edge technologies. "Adding Pedro to our team increases our capabilities exponentially," said Keith Kemph, BlackFin Group CEO. "His industry experience will allow us to add a new dimension to our client engagements and his contacts in the industry will put us in a position to help more of the nation's top banks. I am very pleased to have him working with us at BlackFin Group." During his eight years at the Fed, Fong was responsible, in part, for creating three- to five- year, forward-looking strategic roadmaps as well as identifying future technologies to meet the business capability needs of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy goals. He characterizes this as "helping to bridge the gap between business and technology." Before that, Fong was a principle at Innovative Relevance, where he consulted with clients to deliver innovative solutions that ensured growth. Before that, he was a principal at SunGard Global Services, a business process management consultancy. Over the course of his career, Fong has developed a number of specialties, including: strategic planning, business process improvement, organizational change management, process engineering, and technology business strategy. MAXEX ADDS MITCHELL JOHNSON AS CTO MAXEX, the first digital mortgage exchange to enable the buying and selling of residential loans through a single clearinghouse, has added Mitchell Johnson as CTO. MAXEX continues to achieve record adoption and now has many leading Wall Street investment banks, REITs and insurance companies actively trading on its mortgage exchange. e company previously announced that it had achieved record nonagency trading volume in 2020 and more than tripled its total lock trading volume over the prior year. MAXEX has now exceeded $18 billion in nonagency trading volume as of the end of February 2021. As CTO, Johnson will play a pivotal role in scaling the company's technology platform to accommodate its rapid growth. As CTO, Johnson will lead all aspects of MAXEX's product strategy, data, security, and technology including future development of MAXEX's digital mortgage exchange and platform. Prior to MAXEX, he was CTO for eVestment, a NADSAQ company originally backed by Insight Venture Partners. eVestment provides institutional investment data, analytics, and market intelligence to public and private market investors. Johnson has more than 25 years of experience in technology, data, product, and mergers and acquisitions including stints at Equifax, Grant ornton, and Delta Air Lines. He is a graduate of Georgia Tech and holds an MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. "MAXEX is an exciting and rapidly growing fintech company that is uniquely positioned within the largest credit market in the world— the U.S. mortgage loan market," Johnson said. "MAXEX is solving a series of highly complex and antiquated problems with the way mortgage loans are traded. e company has made amazing progress increasing liquidity in the U.S. housing markets, and I am thrilled to join and lead this talented technology team." MORTGAGE CONNECT APPOINTS BRIAN FRYE AS EVP SERVICING & CAPITAL MARKETS STRATEGY Mortgage Connect LP, a national mortgage services provider for the nation's largest financial institutions, investors, servicers, and GSEs, announced it has appointed Capital Markets veteran Brian Frye to the role of EVP, Servicing and Capital Markets Strategy. e company tapped Frye in October 2019 to lead its Capital Markets division which provides title, collateral, and transaction support services that cater to the demanding needs of institutional investors, banks, and GSEs that trade and securitize whole loans in the secondary market. "We are pleased to have Brian leading our Servicing and Capital Markets sales and strategy. Brian's success in leading our Capital Markets division growth and expansion demonstrates his resolve in building solutions to meet the needs of the largest clients and investors in the industry," said Jeff Coury Mortgage Connect CEO and Managing Partner. Frye brings decades of experience, specifically with Wall Street investors. Beginning his career with Lehman Brothers prior to the financial housing crash of 2008, he supported the fixed income trade desk. "Title and Collateral defects can be the single biggest risk when trading mortgage assets," Frye said. "Mortgage Connect has built an incredible business model where we provide component service work that protects our clients. We remediate both collateral and title issues so mortgage loan portfolios can be traded and securitized clean and clear." In his expanded role, Frye will be instrumental in product development and sales for the company's full spectrum of end-to-end servicing solutions, including loss mitigation, default services, critical communications, and valuation solutions. He will be leading sales and strategy with a focus on delivery of scalable solutions tailored to meet SLA requirements that boost efficiencies and enhance the consumer experience. Frye was a principal and co-founder of AMRE Solutions, a diversified mortgage default services company, acquired by a large national mortgage services provider in 2013. Prior to joining Mortgage connect in 2019, he was Senior Vice President at Linear Title LLC, (later purchased by Solidifi) where he established the firm's Capital Market division. SLK GLOBAL SOLUTIONS HIRES VP FOR TAX OUTSOURCING OPERATIONS SLK Global Solutions, a provider of digital platforms and business process management solutions to the banking, mortgage, and financial services industry, has added a property tax servicing veteran, Shane Jones, to their leadership team. Jones has been a part of the servicing industry for 25-plus years and has joined SLK Global Solutions as VP for their Tax Outsourcing Operations. SLK Global's property tax servicing platform, RETS, handles tax servicing for residential and commercial loans and is supporting several leading lenders and servicers in the industry including two of the top commercial servicers. In this role, Jones will be primarily responsible for three areas: 1) Executing RETS integrations with leading mortgage servicing systems, 2) RETS' expansion

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