anne-balcer-norton-110.gif

Anne Balcer Norton

Deputy Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of Financial Regulation

Anne Balcer Norton serves as the Deputy Commissioner of Financial Regulation within Maryland’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. Her July 2010 appointment was consistent with the O'Malley-Brown Administration's leadership in enacting sweeping foreclosure prevention laws and common sense mortgage regulation. Within the broad jurisdiction of the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Regulation, Ms. Balcer Norton oversees financial institutions ranging from community banks and credit unions to mortgage lenders and brokers to check cashers and debt management firms. Before her career in public service, Balcer Norton distinguished herself as the Director of the Foreclosure Prevention Division of St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, the oldest housing non-profit in Baltimore City.While at St. Ambrose she implemented an innovative approach to offering legal services and housing counseling/budget counseling for low to moderate income individuals in Maryland facing foreclosure. The program has been replicated nationally.Prior to joining St. Ambrose, she served as general counsel for a national mortgage lender, where she was responsible for origination and secondary market regulatory compliance, state licensing and risk management oversight across twenty-four states.Balcer Norton has presented extensively on matters involving consumer protection, fair housing and mortgage lending. She has been invited to testify before Congress, the TARP Oversight Committee and in state and local legislatures on foreclosure and fair housing in Maryland and the District of Columbia. Balcer Norton has also presented extensively nationwide as an advocate for the underserved. She serves as the Vice Chairman of the Multi-State Mortgage Committee (“MMC”), a collective body of state regulatory agencies from across the country that strives for examination uniformity in mission, supervision, processes and professional development for state regulators. She participates on the Task Force on Consumer Compliance of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, or FFIEC, a formal interagency body made up of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and other federal financial regulators.Notably, she was honored with the American Association of Residential Mortgage Regulators (“AARMR”) Distinguished Service Award in August 2012 for the efforts of Maryland’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Regulation in leading the state regulatory agencies in collaboration with Attorneys General from 49 states, the Department of Justice and HUD in the recent $25 billion foreclosure robo-signing settlement. The Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition just announced that she has been named the 2012 Consumer Advocate of the Year.She received her J.D., magna cum laude, with honors, from the University of Baltimore School of Law and her B.A. from Randolph Macon College.