Hi, I’m Adam DeSanctis. This is The Mortgage Minute, the latest news from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Last week, FHFA director Bill Pulte announced via a tweet on X that quote, unquote, effective immediately. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will allow lenders to use vantage score with no current requirement to build to new infrastructure. His announcement was followed by several other tweets that appeared to indicate pricing incentives for those that used both FICO and Vantage Score 4.0. Now there’s a lot to unpack. Bill has consistently advocated for increased competition in credit reporting and scoring and welcomes reforms that will lower cost for consumers. FHFA’s announcement could help to accomplish the goals of added competition in the credit score space and reduce consumer costs if implemented correctly. We’re keenly aware that numerous policy, operational and systems details will need to be addressed before lenders can submit Vantage scores to the GSCs and MBA has already highlighted several key issues in communications with the GSCs while the policy change was quote unquote effective immediately. It’ll take some time before Vantage Score 4.0 is available for use as a practical matter. We are engaged with FHFA and the GSEs and look forward to working with them to address the numerous implementation questions that are necessary to realize the benefits of updated scoring models. We will also continue to press for reforms of the Tier credit reporting requirement to encourage greater competition and lower costs for consumers. That’s it for this week. Thank you for listening.
Adam DeSanctis, Director of Public Affairs at Mortgage Bankers Association
As a strategic public affairs and communications executive with nearly two decades of experience, Adam has deep expertise in strategy, management, and media relations. He is widely considered to be an expert in a variety of communications, including advocacy, brand, executive, crisis, grassroots, and social media. In his career, he has been the MBA spokesperson on a wide variety of real estate research and advocacy-related issues, promoted MBA research and advocacy efforts to financial, political, and trade industry media and on MBA’s social media channels, and secured media opportunities for MBA leadership on key real estate trends and issues, generated media coverage for MBA’s research and data on mortgage applications, credit availability, homebuilder applications, mortgage forbearance/delinquencies, commercial real estate originations, and forecasts, and other industry analysis, developed key strategic initiatives for MBA’s organizational public affairs plan, media relations and member communications support for mPower, MBA’s Opens Doors Foundation and MBA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.