First Guaranty Mortgage Corporation (FGMC) has announced that it has formed a compliance partnership with New York-based Lenders Compliance Group. Lenders Compliance Group is a full-service, mortgage risk management firm specializing in residential lending compliance, and will provide an in-depth and continuous compliance review of FGMC’s entire origination process. The firm will further help monitor all compliance aspects of FGMC’s contact with the public, through retail, wholesale and correspondent channels. The firm will assist FGMC and its compliance team with all areas of residential mortgage compliance.
“FGMC has chosen a course of action that provides independent, substantive support to its own highly competent, internal compliance professionals,” said Jonathan Foxx, president and managing director of Lenders Compliance Group. “It’s a prudent course in this ever-shifting regulatory and enforcement landscape.”
FGMC also announced that the company has added to its ranks with the additions of Linda Jacobs-Levardo as national training manager; Elizabeth Ramsey as national underwriting manager and Chris Tyrrell as national due diligence manager.
Jacobs-Levardo will oversee FGMC’s training and mentoring programs for underwriting, credit policies and government lending product offerings. She comes to FGMC with more than 25 years of experience in the mortgage industry. She worked most recently as a national credit analyst with Home Savings of America. Before that, she was a senior underwriter with Wells Fargo. She has also worked with Radian Group and Washington Mutual Bank. She has extensive experience with government lending programs including the FHA, VA and USDA programs.
Ramsey comes to FGMC with 29 years of experience in the mortgage lending industry. She will help grow and manage FGMC’s underwriting team, emphasizing a team-based approach in line with the lender’s commitment to manual, common-sense underwriting. She was most recently with Home Savings of America as a national credit analyst. Before that, she worked for five years with NBank as an AVP. Ramsey was previously the underwriting manager for First Republic Mortgage and Republic State Mortgage, where she established the lender’s first wholesale lending division for “A-minus paper” loans.
Tyrrell will oversee a team of due diligence underwriting analysts for the correspondent lending division. He will manage the review of loans for acceptability for purchase through the division, including underwriting and compliance reviews of the transactions. Tyrrell comes to FGMC after serving five years as senior vice president of quality control for Home Savings of America, where he oversaw the QC division for the bank. Before that, he was the underwriting manager for the correspondent division at Wilmington Finance. Tyrrell has extensive experience with pre-funding and post-funding quality control, broker administration, underwriting and operations management. He has also been involved with HUD and FHA administrative projects, implementation and compliance with the NMLS Registration/SAFE Act regulation.
“While many of our competitors are focused on improving their production capabilities, we believe that good production begins with stout operations: compliance, due diligence, quality control and underwriting,” said FGMC CEO Andrew Peters. “FGMC’s new relationship with Lenders Compliance Group and our addition of Chris, Linda and Elizabeth again confirm our steady commitment to efficient, compliant loan production. FGMC believes that the approval of HUD, Ginnie Mae and Fannie Mae to partner in their home loan programs is a privilege, which demands that we take a best practices approach to compliance.”
