Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco to be led by former Radian exec Bazemore

While not inactive in the housing community since retiring in 2017, Teresa Bryce Bazemore said the opportunity to advance the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco's objectives brought her back on a full-time basis.

Bazemore will become president and CEO of the San Francisco bank on March 15, replacing Stephen Traynor, who held both titles on an interim basis since Greg Seibly resigned one year ago.

"When you think about what I've been focused on and what I've been very passionate about over my career, a lot of it has been in alignment with what the bank's mission is: affordable housing, community development and economic development," Bazemore said. "It just seemed like the perfect combination for me to work with the Bank and it was something that was exciting enough to entice me out of retirement."

From July 2008 through April 2017, Bazemore was the president of private mortgage insurer Radian Guaranty. Her career in the mortgage business started in September 1990 as the vice president and associate general counsel of Prudential Home Loans. Bazemore also was at NationsBank, where she helped integrate the mortgage business with Bank of America after those organizations merged, and then was on the executive team at Nexstar Financial before its sale to MBNA.

After leaving Radian, Bazemore was elected to the board of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, where she served between August 2017 and February 2019.

While the San Francisco bank's role in housing finance is different than Radian's, both are aligned in helping low- to moderate-income borrowers have access to affordable credit, and creating affordable housing opportunities and sustainable homeownership, Bazemore said.

"The mission of the bank is broader in that we also are helping with other types of housing opportunities that may not always be homeownership, but other ways to provide for affordable housing in the community," she said.

At Prudential Home Loans, Bazemore was involved with the task force that created products that expanded its lending to include more opportunities for low and moderate income consumers, and an initiative to increase outreach to minority borrowers.

During Bazemore's time at NationsBank, she worked on fair lending as well as its community development bank. That experience is in line with the San Francisco Home Loan bank's focus on helping small businesses.

Bazemore has already had preliminary discussions with the leadership team at the San Francisco Home Loan bank, getting up to speed on its activities.

During the pandemic, Bazemore noted, "the system as a whole has really stepped up and functioned in a way it was intended to function in a situation like this. We'll continue to see if there's opportunities to do more to help our members help their customers in the communities in our footprint" of California, Nevada and Arizona.

She is looking to keep stakeholders, especially those in Washington, educated on the role of the San Francisco bank in the U.S. financial system and how it has benefited the members and the community during the pandemic.

"The Federal Home Loan Bank system is the other GSE if you will and it provides a lot of low cost liquidity into the system," Bazemore said. "But for most people, that role is not front and center and I think we need to make sure that in the future, policymakers in particular but more broadly everyone, understands how important how important the Federal Home Loan banks are to the overall economy and the housing economy."