Ex-Fannie Exec Sees Reduced GSE Role

If the government-sponsored housing finance enterprises survive, they will do so as a pale reflection of their former selves, an ex-Fannie Mae executive believes. "They will have a smaller, narrower role, if they are going to have a role at all," Adolfo Marzol of Marzol Enterprises, Washington, said at the Consumer Bankers Association's annual Home Equity Lending Conference in Austin, Texas. The GSEs' reduced presence, he told the meeting, will leave the door open for banks and thrifts to return to a much more central position in the mortgage market, a place they all but ceded years ago to mortgage bankers and brokers. It may be business as usual for the GSEs over the next 18-24 months, he said. But "three or four years from now," the market will be totally different, he said. Mr. Marzol, who called the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a "monumental" event, spent 10 years at Fannie, including six as executive vice president and chief credit officer. In his last year at the GSE, he served in an interim capacity as the company's chief risk officer.