Blend hires ex-Fannie CEO Mayopoulos as president

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Timothy Mayopoulos is back in the mortgage industry, months after leaving his post as Fannie Mae’s CEO.

Mayopoulos is joining the digital mortgage technology vendor Blend as its president and is expected to oversee the Silicon Valley startup's long-term planning strategy.

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Timothy Mayopoulos, president and chief executive officer of Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., on Tuesday, May 1, 2018. Mayopoulos discussed the organization's future. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

"Tim Mayopoulos is a terrific leader who will help us provide exceptional value to our growing customer base as we scale," Blend CEO Nima Ghamsari said in a press release. "I've collaborated closely with Tim for over four years, and he believes strongly in technology's potential to bring simplicity, transparency and accessibility to the broader consumer finance ecosystem.”

Mayopoulos also will join Blend’s board of directors.

"I'm thrilled to join Blend at a critical point in its growth trajectory and look forward to helping the company continue to drive positive change in consumer finance in the years to come," Mayopoulos said in the press release.

During Mayopoulos' time as CEO, Fannie Mae implemented its Day 1 Certainty program, an initiative to encourage lenders to increase their use of automation and third-party data in the mortgage origination process. Blend was approved as a Day 1 Certainty vendor in early 2018.

Mayopoulos previously had made it known that he planned to pursue opportunities in fintech and affordable housing. In 2016, he joined the board of directors at the marketplace lender LendingClub.

Blend, which develops technology that banks and other mortgage lenders use to collect and evaluate loan applications, has raised $160 million in venture funding, according to Crunchbase, including a $100 million round of investment led by Greylock Partners in August 2017.

The company said in the press release that it processed more than $230 billion in loan applications last year.

Blend also announced a number of additional executive hires:

Olivia Teich joins Blend as the head of product after holding similar positions at Dropbox and a software company called Jive.

Kallol Das is now the head of engineering for Blend after stints at Amazon and Salesforce, among other companies.

Blend also named a head of marketing, Justin Schuster, who was vice president of marketing at LiveRamp, an identity platform provider.

“This group brings a wealth of experience and skill to Blend's executive team, and their contributions will be pivotal to achieving our goal of a simpler, more transparent financial services ecosystem,” Ghamsari said.

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Digital mortgages GSEs Mortgage technology Consumer direct Online banking Marketplace lending C-suite Fintech Fannie Mae
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