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March 2016 - Castro Up Close

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47 » VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM Andrew Bon Salle is Fannie Mae's Executive Vice President – Single- Family Business, which is a leading source of liquidity in the U.S. residential housing market. Mr. Bon Salle is responsible for all aspects of the Single-Family business, including engagement with Single-Family customers, managing the performance of the credit portfolio, and overseeing all Single-Family capital markets activities. Mr. Bon Salle is also leading the company's efforts to integrate with the Common Securitization Platform. Most recently Mr. Bon Salle served as Fannie Mae's Senior Vice President and Head of Underwriting and Pricing overseeing the company's credit risk management and pricing strategies to optimize the performance of the Single-Family credit book throughout different economic cycles. What are the priorities for Fannie Mae's Single-Family business in the coming year? Our top priority in 2016 is to continue our drive to put the customer at the center of everything we do. at means improving the customer experience so that doing business with us is easier and simpler. We want to fix customers' pain points and organize ourselves to meet their needs, not the other way around. We are going to keep innovating and providing tools that give customers more certainty about sale, execution, and process. As always, Fannie Mae will also focus on expanding access to affordable mortgage financing for creditworthy borrowers. Finally, we will continue building out innovative dynamic risk management capabilities. Historically, we have been a company that buys and keeps credit risk. More and more, we expect to be a company that also distributes some credit risk, drawing private capital into the secondary market and reducing risk for taxpayers. What do you see in the future of underwriting for single-family loans? Where do you see credit standards going? We have a responsibility to help our customers serve as many creditworthy borrowers as possible in a way that is safe and sustainable for everyone. Our current credit standards are strong. We believe that they are responsible and that they provide access to credit for qualified borrowers. e real opportunity lies in the changes we are making to give our customers the ability to lend with confidence to borrowers who meet today's credit standards. Innovations in data, third-party validation capabilities, and trended credit data provide a great opportunity to both lower costs for lenders and improve the borrower experience. We have added new tools to make it easier for lenders to check on loan eligibility and to deliver loans. We are also always listening to customers so that we can update our guides to be more responsive to the market and to streamline the underwriting process. Recently, for example, we updated and streamlined our guidance for calculating self-employed income and rental income in response to customer feedback. Our hope is that by providing lenders with more information, more powerful tools, and greater certainty, they will be able to provide more qualified borrowers with affordable homeownership opportunities. What is Fannie Mae doing to help more potential homeowners gain access to affordable mortgage credit? First, as I mentioned, we are providing tools to give customers the confidence to lend to more borrowers that meet current credit standards. In addition, we recently introduced our HomeReady™ affordable lending product. HomeReady offers flexibility and sustainability for borrowers and simplicity and certainty for our lenders. It is available to both first-time and repeat homebuyers and provides flexible down payment options. Also, for the first time, HomeReady allows consideration of income from nonborrower household members. is can help multi generational and extended households qualify for an affordable, sustainable mortgage. Beyond this, we are also taking a fresh look at our selling policies to remove potential barriers to mortgage credit, and we're simplifying our requirements to support customers who serve lower-income borrowers and communities. Finally, we are helping our customers focus their marketing and sales efforts to reach creditworthy homebuyers who may be sitting on the sidelines. The serious delinquency rate on Fannie Mae-backed single-family loans is getting closer to its pre-recession level and is less than half the national average. What factors have contributed to this? In the wake of the housing crisis, we developed our loss mitigation capabilities and improved our underwriting and eligibility guidelines. Working with customers and other industry partners, we have been able to drive down the serious delinquency rate. We have helped families avoid foreclosure through 1.8 million loan workout solutions since the beginning of 2009. e loans we've acquired since 2009 are performing well so far, which has supported a lower-than-average delinquency rate on our recent acquisitions. Of course, the economy has also improved, which helps a lot. Having said that, we continue to work through a population of delinquent loans that were originated before 2009, particularly in states with long foreclosure timelines. We expect that work to continue for some time. You've been with Fannie Mae since 1993. How has the organization evolved over the years in your estimation? e biggest change is our drive for innovation in serving our customers. e housing and mortgage markets have evolved since 1993 and so has Fannie Mae. Today, the pace of change is accelerating. Our customers are in the process of transforming their relationships with their customers, the homebuyers. ey need a secondary market partner that is sharply focused on innovation and providing technology tools that will enable that transformation. Increasingly, we have to earn our customers' business, and one of the ways we are doing that is by making it easier to work with Fannie Mae. What has not changed is our focus on our affordable housing mission and being a reliable partner in all markets at all times–that is in our DNA.

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