Trump taps ex-Corker aide as head of Ginnie Mae

President Trump has nominated Michael Bright, the acting president and chief operating officer of Ginnie Mae, to head the agency full time.

Ginnie has been without a permanent head since January 2017 when Ted Tozer left the agency after seven years as president.

Bright was the front-runner to lead Ginnie, which he joined in mid-2017 as executive vice president and COO. He currently manages Ginnie's $1.8 trillion portfolio of mortgage-backed securities.

Ginnie Mae acting president Michael Bright.
U.S. Department of Housing and U/Mitch Miller

Ginnie oversees the securitization of Federal Housing Administration and Department of Veterans Affairs loans by ensuring that principal and interest payments on loans insured by other agencies are paid to bond holders in a timely fashion.

Bright is a former director of financial markets at the Milken Institute, a former asset manager at BlackRock and a former senior vice president at PennyMac.

He was a principal staff author of the so-called Corker-Warner bill, which aimed to reform the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac based on talks between Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Mark Warner, D-Va.

The GSEs remain in conservatorship more than 10 years after they were taken over and efforts at housing reform are unlikely to bear fruit this year.

Earlier in his career, Bright was a senior financial policy adviser to Corker, who plans to step down from Congress at the end of the year.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
GSE reform Housing finance reform Ginnie Mae Fannie Mae Freddie Mac
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER