CrossCountry Mortgage (CCM), the nation’s number one distributed retail mortgage lender, has added three to its executive leadership team: Vandad Fartaj as chief investment officer, William Chang as chief capital markets officer, and Tom Rettinger as chief portfolio risk officer. All three have held executive roles at PennyMac, with Fartaj serving as senior managing director and chief investment officer of both PennyMac Financial Services and PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust; upon Fartaj’s departure in 2023, Chang succeeded him as senior managing director of the former and senior managing director and chief investment officer of the latter. Rettinger, meanwhile, served in various positions at Pennymac, including senior managing director, portfolio risk management. In their new roles, the team will lead CCM’s capital markets and investment-related activities, which include the development and execution of investment strategies, secondary market activities, risk management and hedging activities.
Movement Mortgage has announced that Steve Smith has been named as president and chief financial officer (CFO). In this role, Smith will oversee all sales, operations, finance, and corporate functions. Smith previously served as an executive advisor to Movement and brings three decades of executive leadership experience in sales, operations and finance to his new role. Prior to joining the company, Smith held the position of president and CFO of Stearns Lending, CFO of Caliber Home Loans, executive for core servicing and centralized sales for Bank of America, and CFO of consumer markets for Countrywide.
InterLinc Mortgage has announced the addition of Brian Ramey as business development manager. With over 12 years in the mortgage industry, Ramey comes to Interlinc from roles at Rapid Mortgage, Fidelity Mortgage, USA Mortgage, and CrossCountry Mortgage. He is a graduate of Wright State University with a degree in business.
Optimal Blue has announced that Erin Wester has been promoted to chief product officer and Mike Vough has been promoted to head of corporate strategy. Wester, who was formerly focused on the company’s product and pricing solutions, will now oversee product strategy for the entire Optimal Blue capital markets platform, which includes product and pricing, broker pricing solutions, hedging and trading platforms, investor services solutions, Comergence compliance solutions, user experience and design departments, and the integrations department. Vough, who was previously leading the strategy for Optimal Blue’s hedging and trading solutions, will now focus on corporate strategy, which includes business development to support the company’s integration partner network, as well as corporate development to drive its acquisition strategy. Vough will also drive the continued growth of Optimal Blue’s data business, including the company’s data reseller partners.
