Career moves

Papanii Okai will fill a newly created position of executive vice president of product engineering at Rocket Mortgage.

Chief capital markets officer William Chang is stepping down "to explore new opportunities within the mortgage banking sector."

Also, Opendoor adds former Fannie Mae president to board, NFM promotes social media influencer and the Mortgage Bankers Association names its new director of member relations.

The successor to Michael Hutchins, who filled the role on an interim basis, guided a well-known bank's real estate business through the financial crisis.

In a little over a month, the company's newly appointed chief strategy officer has built out a six-person strong recruiting team.

The new exec is a former CEO of Sagent and Cloudvirga, and worked at Black Knight for over a decade.

Doug Duncan joined Fannie Mae in 2008 after holding the chief economist position at the Mortgage Bankers Association for almost 16 years.

After a bruising takeover battle, CoreLogic went private. Pat Dodd, who moved into the CEO role soon after that, details how much has changed during his two-year tenure.

In addition to promoting Tom Hutchens to president, non-qualified TPO Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions also named a trio of new executive vice presidents.

Benutech's former CEO will head Voxtur, which is selling a majority stake in Blue Water Finance Technologies and repositioning itself in real estate lending.

Thanh Roettele will help guide the Canadian bank's growth in the mortgage warehouse space in one of its latest moves aimed at the U.S. market.

Rocktop, Candor name new technology heads, Servicelink finds national sales executives and Cornerstone Capital sets its eyes on growth.

Titles can vary among competitors, but the leaders of loan officers all value experience in both sales scenarios and technology acumen.

Increasing immediate volume and preparing for future volume are drivers for a ramp up in LO hiring, mortgage lenders say. Recruiters warn, however, that operations professionals should also be hired to avoid bottlenecks in production.

The embattled Long Island-based bank announced the hiring of nine new senior executives. Most of them have ties to CEO Joseph Otting, who previously held the top job at the OCC and OneWest Bank.

Hugh Frater was one of four appointed to the Bipartisan Policy Center board, along with former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, a co-chair of its Housing Council.

While cost cutting days are not over, mortgage lenders are emphasizing recruitment and retention, a Fannie Mae survey found.

A federal judge agrees with plaintiffs that the Federal Trade Commission lacks authority to set rules on unfair competition.

Also, U.S. Mortgage Insurers appoints familiar face as chairman, while Incenter, Carrington, NFM Lending and Xactus find new C-suite executives.

Heather Lovier, a veteran at the company with over two decades of experience, will be in charge of overseeing the entire homeownership experience within the organization.