By the time Homepoint is done, there may not be anyone left in the corner offices at Fannie Mae.
The wholesale mortgage originator and servicer announced Wednesday that it had hired yet another longtime mortgage executive at Fannie Mae, its third big poach from the GSE this year.
Noelle Lipscomb, who worked at the GSE for nearly two decades, has joined the Ann Arbor-headquartered firm as the company’s chief audit executive, where she will run point on Homepoint’s internal risk-based auditing services and controls.
Lipscomb served at Fannie Mae for 17 years in various senior audit positions prior to her departure, and was a senior auditor at PWC before her time with the GSE.
“Noelle’s understanding of the mortgage space will be instrumental in advising Homepoint on risk management and providing insight into our business operations and processes as our company continues to expand as a public entity and rapidly evolve as a leading mortgage originator and servicer,” Willie Newman, President and CEO of Homepoint, said in a statement.
Homepoint made its landmark hire from the GSE in January when it brought on Andrew Bon Salle, Fannie Mae’s former head of single family lending. Bon Salle was appointed chairman of the board. He was joined a few months later by John Forlines, who was named chief risk officer. Forlines spent 33 years at Fannie Mae, eventually rising through the ranks to become its chief risk officer.
Homepoint, a pure-play wholesaler, has made large strides in its near six years in the market. Homepint most recently ranked as the 15th-largest mortgage originator in 2020 based on number of loans issued. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau‘s Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, the lender originated $41 billion in single-family mortgages for all of 2020. It grew originations by 226% last year, bested only by Freedom Mortgage (344%) among the top 25 lenders in America.
The explosion in volume led its parent company Home Point Capital, which is controlled by private equity firm Stone Point Capital, to make its public debut in January.
The three Fannie hires at Homepoint represent just a sampling of the departures from Fannie and Freddie since the fall, which most observers have attributed to the companies’ dashed hopes to exit conservatorship.
Andrew Peters, most recently head of single family strategy at Fannie, was just named this week as Lenderworks‘ newest president on Monday. And Desmond Smith, Fannie Mae’s former senior vice president and chief customer officer for single family business, left than two months ago to join United Wholesale Mortgage as the wholesaler’s chief growth officer.
In January, Fannie Mae’s head of digital products, Henry Cason, announced his move to become CEO of FinLocker after 27 years of work at the GSE.
