POLICY & COMPLIANCE TRACK: A Conversation with the Agencies (CLE 1.0)

Anna Craft

Partner, Bradley

Anna Craft advises financial services companies on a variety of complex compliance and regulatory matters. Her practice has focused on the negotiation and implementation of consent judgments with various regulators and the proactive implementation of changes to business practices that are required as a result of new statutes and regulations. Anna uses her experience with and knowledge of the financial services industry to identify and mitigate risks that may arise in various business practices as a result of a dynamic and unpredictable regulatory environment. She works directly with her clients’ internal legal department and business leaders to identify the most efficient and effective measures to ensure compliance with federal, state, and local requirements or to identify.

Brendan Kelleher

Director, Loan Administration, Mortgage Bankers Association

Brendan Kelleher is Associate Director of Loan Administration at the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) where he manages MBA’s legislative and regulatory strategy for residential loan administration and worked with federal housing regulators, investors, and guarantors to improve and streamline servicing requirements. Prior to joining MBA, Brendan worked at Rocket Central as Director, Public Policy overseeing external relations and mortgage policy advocacy. Before joining Rocket Central and MBA, Brendan began his career at Rocket Mortgage as the FHA Servicing Product Manager managing the implementation of FHA servicing policy.

Jeffrey Little

General Deputy Assistant Secretary, FHA, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Jeffrey Little serves as the General Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Housing. In this role, he oversees the Federal Housing Administration’s programs providing mortgage insurance for single family housing, multifamily affordable and market-rate rental housing, and healthcare facilities. He also is responsible for managing the Office of Housing’s project-based rental assistance, housing counseling, and manufactured housing programs. He leads HUD’s strategic objective to increase the supply of housing and also serves as the executive sponsor for the Office of Housing’s technology modernization projects. From 2019-2022, Little served as Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing, where he oversaw FHA Multifamily mortgage insurance programs, Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance, Section 202 Housing for the Elderly, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities, and the Rental Assistance Demonstration. In prior roles, Little served as Director of Multifamily’s Program Systems Management Office, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Housing Operations, and Deputy Director of the Office of Recapitalization. He also directed the Performance Management Division in HUD’s Office of Strategic Planning and Management, leading the agency’s strategic planning and data-driven management efforts.

Ingrid Ripley

Executive Director, Single-Family Housing Guaranteed Loan Program, USDA Rural Development

Ingrid Ripley is the Executive Director for Single-Family Housing Guaranteed Loan Program (SFHGLP) for the USDA Rural Housing Service and directs a guaranteed portfolio of $114B. Ripley has over 38 years experience in performance management, strategic planning, loan administration, risk management and primary/secondary financial service markets operations for both public and private sectors. She is recognized for her expertise executing multi-million-dollar multifaceted contracts delivering transformative technology lending platforms, and extensive experience leading reorganizations and initiatives for USDA. Ripley has led multiple Small Business Administration (SBA) high-risk mission-critical contract transitions of innovative loan origination platforms.

Stephanie A. Schader

Senior Policy Advisor, Ginnie Mae

Stephanie Schader is the Director of MBS Policy and Program Development at Ginnie Mae. She brings over 30 years of housing policy expertise, having worked in mortgage origination and servicing, loan processing, and consumer credit for US Bank (formerly Star Banc/Firstar), PHH Mortgage, and Wells Fargo, before joining the FHA Single-Family Office in March 2008. She worked diligently through the financial crisis to develop and implement loss mitigation programs, including FHA Short-Refinance and FHA-Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) Pay for Success. Schader first joined Ginnie Mae in 2011, where she has served in a range of policy leadership and strategic development roles. Tasked with building and leading Ginnie Mae’s policy division, she leverages her extensive knowledge of the mortgage markets and collaborates across the enterprise to develop and integrate policy solutions with business operations to enhance the MBS program and address market and stakeholder needs. She has been a thought leader and key contributor to Ginnie Mae’s innovation in the last decade, working on the development of extended pool types, reperforming loan eligibility, business modernization initiatives, and multiple participations in Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) mortgage-backed securities (HMBS).

Elizabeth Spring

Senior Servicing Program Manager, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

Beth has more than 12 years of experience in housing policy, specializing in mortgage servicing, credit risk and credit policy. Currently, Beth serves as Sr. Servicing Program Manager in the office of Mortgage Markets at the CFPB. She works to develop policies and strategies that address market needs for consumer financial products and services. Beth’s prior work includes federal regulation and oversight at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, ensuring the regulated entities fulfill their mission by operating in a safe and sound manner to serve as a reliable source of liquidity and funding for the housing finance market throughout the economic cycle. Prior to FHFA, Beth worked at the US Department of Treasury in the Office of Financial Stability on the Making Home Affordable Program (MHA) and served as a key advisor in the development and implementation of the federally funded, national loss mitigation and foreclosure prevention programs.