Ginnie Mae has announced several key appointments to its team as part of its continued work to advance its mission in affordable housing finance and build its operations and policy capacity.
Laura M. Kenney joins Ginnie Mae as a career executive, serving as Senior Advisor for Strategic Operations as the search for a permanent COO commences, and report to Ginnie Mae President Alanna McCargo [1].
Kenney was most recently Executive Director in the Digital Direct Chief Operating Office at Morgan Stanley. Previously, she led E*TRADE’s efforts to design and implement a future-state regulatory reporting platform. Kenney has more than 15 years of experience in housing finance and risk management, also having held leadership roles at JPMorgan Chase and Fannie Mae.
“I am thrilled to continue to build out our executive leadership team with a seasoned housing finance risk and operations professional like Laura,” said McCargo. “We are grateful for her willingness to serve our country in this role, and at a time when we are managing varied risks in the housing market while evolving our strategy, strengthening our governance, and improving our operational infrastructure for the future.”
Ginnie Mae also announced the political appointment of Britt Van [2] as Special Advisor to the President. Van will help shape the public policy and engagement strategy aimed at key intergovernmental stakeholders and Congress. Van joins Ginnie Mae with 10 years of Capitol Hill, public policy, and financial services experience, most recently serving as Policy Director for the New Democrat Coalition in the U.S. House of Representatives. In that capacity, she led a vast policy portfolio on issues such as economic development, climate, housing, tax, and infrastructure for the coalition of roughly 100 members of Congress.
Ginnie Mae also announced that its mortgage-backed securities (MBS) portfolio outstanding grew to $2.373 trillion at the end of Q1 2023, with the addition of $80 billion of MBS issuance during the period, with gross issuance ranging within $24-28 billion each month. The first quarter’s new MBS issuance supported financing of more than 281,000 households, including more than 126,000 first-time homebuyers. Roughly 70% percent of the first quarter issuance volume reflects purchase money activity, resulting from a shift in market conditions and reduced loan refinance activity due to higher interest rates.
While overall issuance volumes have declined over the past year, returning to a more normalized purchase money market, current origination volumes across all four agency partners, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Loan Guaranty Program (VA), U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Housing Services (RHS) and HUD’s Public and Indian Housing (PIH), reflect strong support for affordable housing and homeownership nationwide.
During Q1 2023, the mortgage loans pooled into Ginnie Mae MBS included more than 45,000 households who avoided foreclosure through our insuring and guarantying agencies partners’ loss mitigation programs. Ginnie Mae is proud to support our Issuers on the secondary capital markets and expand liquidity while supporting home retention efforts.
Q1 2023 issuance includes $77.15 billion of Ginnie Mae II MBS and $3.50 billion of Ginnie Mae I MBS, including approximately $3.13 billion in loans for multifamily housing. Approximately 30% of these multifamily MBS properties had Green or Green/Affordable designations from FHA’s lending program.