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56 Feature By: Eric C. Peck What are some of your greatest career accomplishments? ere are three that I am most proud of. We think of ourselves as a trusted buyer of assets from large banks and nonbanks. Early in the stages of buying MSRs, we won a $20 billion trade from one of the larger banks. e bank approved the trade because they trusted us. We had to have Ginnie Mae approve that trade. en we had to board $20 billion worth of customers, and we did that successfully. We managed that portfolio with good results for those customers. at was a top turning point. Number two was winning the Ginnie Mae MSR default servicer contract, when we became a servicer for Ginnie Mae. We have very close relations with Ginnie Mae. ird, I'm proud of business development, which has allowed us to execute on many different transactions, including MSRs and EBOs, which are managed by our team under Andrew Taffet, our Chief Investment Officer, and his staff up in Connecticut; because we think of ourselves as an asset manager first, across all the Carrington companies. What are some of the primary challenges currently facing the industry? ere have been a number of state regulatory and agency issues, especially at the state level. ere are a few issues popping up on the East Coast that we need to work together on to avoid harm to our customers, local communities, and our industry. We need to continually educate and advocate to improve our industry for our positions. We are experts in the industry and need to continue to share those thoughts and insight. We can do this through involvement in groups like the National Mortgage Servicing Association. I'm also the President of the California Mortgage Bankers Association and a member of the MBA Senior Servicing Council. All the companies in our industry, as I said before, need to be involved in order to make the industry better. Are there any individuals that you would consider a mentor during the course of your career? What lessons did you learn from them that made you a better individual and mortgage professional? I was lucky enough in my early years to have two good mentors. I believe strongly in mentorship and right now, giving back internally within Carrington, I mentor three people in Carrington and one person outside of Carrington through the California Mortgage Bankers Association. ere is one individual, Bob Janning, who had a career at Associates as an EVP, who I would consider my mentor. He just taught me to be visible and talk to your people. His point was that it's always easy to find out what's going right, but you need to find out what needs to be improved. e people who know the best are the line-level people, and if you listen to them and then implement their ideas to fix situations, you gain respect. People notice if you listen. A second individual I consider a mentor was a gentleman named Ed Wooden. His point was that people respect you for making the right decisions, and you can't take a half step. You have to be strong and make the right decision for your company. His point was that if you make the right decisions, people will respect you. Where do you see the mortgage servicing space heading over the course of the next year? It may take one to five years to get back to normal, but we are certainly witnessing change. Servicers were always focused on processing, payments, and ACH. What's changing is that servicers need to provide value to their customers, as they must provide information and education. You need to provide value; if you don't provide value in education and give the customer something they want and need, they are going to leave you, and you're losing both money and an investment. e big thing is providing information and providing value to keep a solid customer base. Having served as Chairman of the NMSA during the height of the pandemic, what key lessons did mortgage servicers take away from this past 24-plus months? In the past, we experienced such critical events as Hurricane Harvey, where NMSA helped to organize the response by working with all the government agencies, banks, and nonbanks. at was good practice for this new challenge that we were facing for the first time, but there were actually two parts to that challenge. Part one: in March 2020, we had a centralized call center workforce and had to √FROM HIS PEERS "He's a team player. If you look at the first two letters of his name, it's indicative of him. He's a 'we' man, not an 'I' man. It's not, 'I know this.' It's not, 'I did that.' It's, 'What can we do? We can figure it out. We all can win.' He always has time for anyone, whether it's a management trainee or a CEO. And if you ever meet with Wes, you'll notice he takes a lot of notes. He does that because he wants to be attentive to your needs and attentive to the conversation to make sure he accomplishes the goals of the conversation." —Tom Huddleston EVP, Head of Vylla Title