DS News - U.S. Bank

» VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM 63 working in Washington, D.C., I like to get out to the rest of the country, and this conference, in particular, has provided a great opportunity to do that. Whether it's me speaking or, more importantly, me listening, I'm able to hear from the day-to-day FHA practitioners what's working, what's not working, what could work better, and how it could work better." HIS SIGHTS ARE SET When looking ahead, Montgomery said his goals for FHA are twofold: first, strengthen its capital and second, modernize the agency's processes and technologies. On the former, Montgomery explained, "We have a responsibility to the taxpayers to help balance our mutual mortgage insurance fund and to keep us in an actuarially sound position," he said. "So, 'strengthen our capital' is always tantamount to what we do. Managing our risk is always extremely important." But fixing the agency's technology, which Montgomery said "has been there a long time," could help in that regard, too. "Our technology was insufficient my last tenure and, by and large, that technology's still there," he said. "Fixing that allows us to not only bring some economy to the scale, but also to help wring out inefficiencies and ultimately actually save us money. is is something that was actually cited in an audit by the Office of Inspector General last year." Some of the work has already begun. Under the last administration, Montgomery said FHA's loan-review system, defect taxonomy, and electronic appraisal-delivery system were all overhauled. "Credit goes to them. ey also helped develop the FHA technology roadmap, which we've updated," he said. "at will allow us to move generationally ahead. It hasn't been done because of the expense, and that's something I'm trying to do right now, working with Senate and House appropriators and authorizers to hopefully get FHA the money that it needs." But there's still room for improvement. As of June this year, FHA had 135 outages in its single-family systems. "I can't imagine that the private sector functions that way," he said. "We're a $1.2 trillion book in single-family—$1.3 trillion if you add it all together. It's critical for us to serve our mission, that we better interact with our partners out there, whether they're lenders or servicers. ere's been some amazing technological advances in this industry over the last five or 10 years, and we've mostly been left behind." Still, it's not just the agency itself that will benefit from technological- and process-related change within the FHA. Montgomery said the end goal is to help homebuyers, lenders, and servicers, too. "We don't operate in a vacuum," he said. "We have to operate through lender partners and servicing partners who, in turn, help citizens of our country who want to use FHA. So to the degree that we can wring out those inefficiencies and bring some sort of common sense improvements, I think that makes the process certainly better for the homeowner, maybe for the servicer, and, hopefully, for us." Changes don't happen overnight though. Modernization is on the agenda but, Montgomery said, "We can't just wave a magic wand." "It's like turning the oil tanker around," he said. "It's lumbering and slow, but there's some common sense things I think we can do that could at least signal to the folks out there that rely on us that we also rely on them—that we heard you and we're going to make some changes." "We have a responsibility to the taxpayers to help balance our mutual mortgage insurance fund and to keep us in an actuarially sound position. So, 'strengthen our capital' is always tantamount to what we do. Managing our risk is always extremely important." —Brian Montgomery, Commissioner, FHA

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