There are many more women serving in key roles in the mortgage industry today than there were when Teresa Bryce Bazemore first started in 1990, but there is still room for more.
Efforts to expand diversity and inclusion are critical to any industry, but they're becoming especially important in mortgage finance. Lenders, along with the mortgage insurers that provide credit enhancement for low down payment loans, will see their customer base evolve as
"A lot of that millennial generation are communities of color and if you look at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard report, over the next 10 to 15 years, household formation is going to be about 74% to 75% people of color and if you go out a little further than that, it's going to get up to almost 85%," Bazemore said.
"So it's important to think about that in terms of outreach and that includes the employees and leadership in the industry."
The situation now is an improvement over the late 1990s when Bazemore first became involved with the Mortgage Bankers Association and was eventually named to the group's Residential Board of Governors.
"Often I was in those meetings where there were two, at best three women in the group and it was a large group back then, [RESBOG] was almost 60 people. And now, I just finished another stint on [RESBOG] and I am on the board of directors of MBA, there are many more women in the room," she said.
"So when you look across the industry, while it is still largely led by males, there are a lot more women that are now either running companies in the mortgage business or have significant roles."
"I view that as a positive that we've improved in that area; there's a lot more work to do," Bazemore said.
For example, Debra Still, one of only two women to
Another positive sign is that in October, Rodrigo Lopez, executive chairman of NorthMarq Capital Finance, will become the first minority to serve as chairman of the MBA, Bazemore said.
Her own background is as an attorney. She was an associate at the law firm Piper & Marbury, where she did some commercial finance work, before joining Prudential Home Mortgage in 1990 as its associate general counsel. After that she was the general counsel for PNC Mortgage and Bank of America Mortgage before moving on to Nexstar Financial Corp.
In October 2006, she joined Radian Group as executive vice president and general counsel.
Bazemore is one of two women occupying top posts at private mortgage insurance companies (
Volunteering to take on the tough tasks is one way for women and minorities looking to move up in the mortgage business to get noticed by the people in the executive suite.
If they're successful, they will get on the radar screens of the executives running the company when it comes time for promotions and other opportunities for advancement, said Bazemore.
The industry "needs to focus on improving how we're doing with women and we need to also focus on how we're doing with people of color," she said.
At Radian, the company has introduced the L.I.N.K. (short for Lead, Inspire, Network, Know) Network, whose mission is to foster a community of ongoing growth and give people an opportunity to develop their leadership skills.
"Just in general, those of us who are in leadership have to make sure that we're providing leadership development opportunities to people across our companies and that includes women and men of diverse backgrounds, to give them an opportunity to grow," Bazemore said.
Meanwhile, as the mortgage industry continues to regain its footing from the housing crisis, it can expand its lending activities.
"You're starting to see, as we have more data, people looking at ways to increase access to credit," while at the same time, continuing to emphasize strong loan underwriting practices, Bazemore said.
"At the end of the day though, one of the things we've all learned is how important it is to make sure that the loans we make lead to affordable, sustainable homeownership."
In addition, counseling also plays a big part in creating a successful home purchaser.
There are now regulatory requirements in place like the ability-to-repay rule, which should help avoid the mistakes of the past happening again, Bazemore said.
