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MortgagePoint » Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 48 Kevin Bowen is Head of Home Lending Product and Innovation for JPMorgan Chase & Co. He leads a team that provides the strategic vision for home lending product offerings and supports the goal of building a transformational lending experience for customers and employees. Prior to this role, Bowen was the Home Lending Origination Product and Strat- egy Lead, where his team simplified underwriting guidelines, expanded product offerings, and coordinated originations channel support for com- munity and affordable lending. Previously, Bowen led the Home Lending Controllers organization, was responsible for the accuracy of the Home Lending books and records, served as the Chief Accounting Officer for Home Lending, and provided primary finance and business manage- ment coverage for the Home Lending Capital Markets business. Bowen is also a member of MortgagePoint's Editorial Advisory Board. MortgagePoint's Demertia Lester recently spoke with Bowen about ex- panding homeownership. Q: How does Chase create focus and provide strategic direction around expanding homeownership? Our goal is to help stabilize and revitalize communities across the country. JPMorgan Chase has made a $30 billion Racial Equity Commitment, and $12 billion of that is focused on increasing sustainable homeownership for Black, Hispanic, and Latino customers across the economic spectrum. The $12 billion is a commitment to incremental lending above and beyond the purchase and refi volume we were anticipating. It's meant to be expansionary, a real commitment to driving change. Additionally, $14 billion of the $30 billion Racial Equity Commitment is to help increase and preserve affordable housing supply. We call our strategy the "six Pillars or the 6 Ps": People, Presence, Products, Partnership, Promotion, and Policy. People means hiring employees that reflect the communities we serve and who are also the local experts in those communities, based in branches there to help bridge the gap to that community and explain the op- tions available to achieve homeownership. Presence is about building a Chase footprint to support our communities and our broader network. Our Community and Affordable Lending team meets with sales teams to discuss the opportunities that exist to holistically serve their com- munities—even if we don't have a specific community Home Lending Advisor or HLA for their market. I'm a Product person, so I get most excited about the Products pillar. We're in a unique and challenging mortgage envi- ronment, but at Chase, we focus on ways we can help reach more families. Whether it's FHA, VA, or GSE, we have several low-down payment options. In the Product pillar, we try to think through where we T H E P O I N T F e a t u r e d C o n v e r s a t i o n s W i t h M o r t g a g e ' s B e s t a n d B r i g h t e s t Kevin Bowen Head of Home Lending Product and Innovation JPMorgan Chase & Co can provide the most access to credit, speaking to the entire economic spectrum of customers. One way is through the Chase Home Buyer Grants which offer up to $7,500 that customers can use to lower their interest rate and/or reduce closing costs and down payments for home pur- chases in select areas across the country. These grants have been very successful in helping to grow homeownership in Black, Hispanic, and Latino communities, and a program that we are very proud of building. We also have what we call our Community Lending program, which is an incentive-based product for our Correspondent lending partners created to help underserved communities. Having programs to support both our direct Home Lending customers, and customers who obtain loans from our Correspondent lending partners, helps increase our reach into the communities we serve. In the Partnership pillar, we aim to build and enhance local relationships with community leaders, local nonprofits, and those in the housing space. We want to partner with them. We want to learn from them. We want to support them. Our Promotion focus is about raising awareness about our programs in the communities we serve. A customer can't ask you for something if they don't know it exists. Under this pillar, we work to dispel myths about homeownership, instill con- fidence, and build the trust and consider- ation of customers and communities. Finally, Policy is about Chase engaging where we want to see positive impacts. We want to participate in reform that enables a more inclusive and equitable mortgage industry, and increases affordable housing supply, availability, and wealth creation. This includes activities like the Heirs property rights initiative, diverse appraiser/ appraisal initiatives, and second-chance hiring. Q: What Chase strategies have proven effective in contributing to responsible homeownership? In addition to the six pillars we already discussed, we've succeeded in a couple of effective strategies. First, we want to hold ourselves accountable. We've developed a robust governance and