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Craig Focardi

Senior Research Director, Retail Banking & Cards

Craig is a Senior Research Director in TowerGroup's Retail Banking & Cards practice specializing in research and advice on mortgage and consumer lending. He covers a wide range of business, process, strategic, and technical topics relating to loan origination, loan servicing, securitization, and risk management. Craig has 25 years of experience in a variety of finance, product development, and business development roles for mortgage technology vendors, lenders, and risk management firms.Prior to joining TowerGroup, Craig was a financial services consultant for clients that included Wells Fargo. His work included developing new home equity loan products for the Internet channel and creating technology specifications to automate correspondent mortgage lending. Before that, Craig was vice president of marketing for Tuttle Decision Systems, where he developed the positioning and branding for Tuttle's electronic loan pricing technology and secondary marketing risk management systems. He was also director of business development at database vendor Mortgage Information Corp. and vice president of marketing at Indy Mac. Craig spent nine years at PMI Mortgage Insurance Co., where he managed the budgeting, market research and product development functions. He began his career as an economic analyst at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. Craig has written numerous feature articles for Mortgage Banking (US) and Lending Strategy (UK) magazines and is quoted regularly in American Banker, National Mortgage News, Inside Mortgage Technology, and Mortgage Technology. He speaks regularly at mortgage industry conferences.In 2003, Craig received the prestigious Certified Mortgage Banker (CMB) designation from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Craig holds a Master of Arts in applied economics from the University of San Francisco and graduated with high honors from the State University of New York at Oneonta with a Bachelor of Science degree in business economics. Craig also attended Schiller University in Heidelberg, where he studied international trade.