New Mortgage Advocacy Group Seeks to Grow

Former top executives at Fannie Mae, PMI, and Countrywide have launched and are seeking to expand a new advocacy group that will lobby on behalf of what it calls "independent, community and regionally-based" mortgage banking firms. The Community Mortgage Banking Project already has 26 members and is talking to eight more, said group founder, Glen Corso, a former senior vice president for The PMI Group, a mortgage insurance firm. His partners in the project include Robert Engelstad, a former senior vice president at Fannie, and Pete Mills, who was Countrywide Financial Corp.'s top lobbyist in Washington. In an interview with National Mortgage News Mr. Corso said his group would not compete with the Mortgage Bankers Association per se but would be involved in lobbying, and legislative and regulatory analysis on behalf of its members. Mr. Corso noted that the CMBP is a "not-for-profit company" but for tax purposes will not be filing as a nonprofit (which enjoy certain federal tax breaks). The MBA, by contrast, is a (Form 990) nonprofit organization with annual results that are publicly available. He said the CMBP would stay away from holding trade shows and getting involved in educational programs — two major sources of revenue for MBA. Mr. Corso is a founding member of The Warehouse Lending Project. That group has been lobbying regulators for government help with efforts aimed at increasing warehouse-lending capacity for nonbanks.