Two well-known mortgage technologists have taken on new positions in recent weeks.
Christos Bettios, formerly a senior product manager overseeing paperless mortgage initiatives at Fannie Mae, is now the chief information officer of the mortgage services division at First American Title Insurance Co.
Greg Alvord, an active volunteer in the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization and the chair of MISMO’s architecture committee, joined RealEC as a senior data architect.
Alvord has nearly two decades’ experience in the mortgage tech space, and was most recently senior vice president of technology at Optimal Blue, a product and pricing engine developer based in suburban Dallas.
Bettios was at Fannie Mae for 10 years, and prior to that, held various e-commerce development positions.
Both regularly appear at industry events and conferences. Bettios has been one of the most visible and vocal advocates of e-mortgages for the government-sponsored enterprises, while Alvord frequently speaks on MISMO initiatives and their impact on the mortgage industry.
The recent moves give Bettios and Alvord the opportunity to pursue broader tasks in the mortgage tech space, they told Mortgage Technology.
“It was just an opportunity that kind of came to me. I was looking to do something different and when something came together, this was more of an opportunity on this side, something broader,” he said.
In his new role, Bettios will have a broader responsibility for mortgage services that goes beyond e-mortgages. “But paperless is part of the strategy with these products,” he said.
"My new role at First American Mortgage Services will focus on expanding the existing portfolio of products and services to help loan originators, servicers, and investors as they retool their mortgage operations for the changing mortgage lending environment," he added.
A Fannie Mae spokesperson confirmed Bettios’ departure but could not immediately provide information on when or if a replacement will be named.
Likewise, Alvord said the move to RealEC, a subsidiary of Lender Processing Services, gives him the opportunity to expand beyond his work in PPE development.
“RealEC…is much more in the mainstream of real estate finance,” Alvord said in an email. “They are working on some innovative new projects that are very exciting to be part of.”
In an interview with Mortgage Technology, RealEC president Dan Sogorka said Alvord’s extensive work developing MISMO data standards for XML files makes him especially valuable as the company expands its data management capabilities.
“We’ve worked with MISMO for a long time. We have our own RealEC XML, but we needed more expertise in data management,” Sogorka said.
RealEC was slow to initially jump on the MISMO bandwagon. But that’s changed, and Sogorka said that adding Alvord to the RealEC development team will help the company more actively participate in MISMO.
“I think 10 years ago, at RealEC, everybody was really nervous that MISMO was going to take away our reason for being,” he said. “But now it’s become a lot more clear that we don’t need to be afraid of that and we’ve embraced more of these platforms as time’s gone on.
“In the past three or four years ago, we were passive nonaggressors,” Sogorka continued. “But I would say the GSE data requirements and the MISMO (Property and Valuation Services) Version 2.6 made us jump on board and actively say this is how we’re going to deliver this file.”
