Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

Mert Kayan is Director of Loss Mitigation Strategies and Products in the National Servicing Organization of Fannie Mae. Mert leads standardized product development efforts with the goal of expanding the reach and effectiveness of loss mitigation solutions that Fannie Mae offers. Since joining Fannie Mae in 2005, Mert has served in various leadership roles including Internal Audit, Single Family Credit Risk Management and Special Assets. Prior to joining Fannie Mae, Mert worked in commercial credit risk management with Arvest Bank Group. Mert has a MBA from R. H. Smith School of Business at University of Maryland.

James H. Francis serves as an executive vice president at Union Bank, N.A., and head of its Consumer Lending division. Appointed to this position in 2009, Francis oversees consumer lending products for Retail Banking and is responsible for the bank’s $24 billion consumer and residential loan portfolio. Francis has more than 25 years of banking experience and a comprehensive knowledge of debt and equity transactions, tax credit investments, underwriting, residential mortgage, and commercial and consumer lending. He joined Union Bank in 1986 and co-founded its Community Development Finance division in 1995, overseeing the division’s expansion across the West Coast and the origination of more than $3 billion in debt and equity financing for the development of affordable housing.Francis has spoken extensively on the subject of affordable housing at conferences hosted by Housing California, the Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing Developers, the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California and others.Well known for his community involvement and leadership in the housing industry, Francis has served as a board member of the California Community Reinvestment Corporation and as a president and board member of the Affordable Housing Investors Council, an organization comprised of the nation’s largest Low Income Housing Tax Credit investors. He also serves on the board of Union Bank Foundation.Francis received his B.A. in economics from the University of California at Davis.

Greg Imm is the SVP and Director of Fifth Third Bank’s Community Affairs, Fair Lending and Responsible Banking (FLRB) Department. In this capacity, he directs the enterprise wide CRA and FLRB programs to responsibly empower families and communities. Prior to joining Fifth Third, Greg was SVP and Senior Compliance Officer for Washington Mutual in Seattle. He was in charge of WaMu’s Corporate Compliance function (Fair Lending, Privacy, Government Reporting, Consumer Complaints, Examination Management, and Unfair Practice Control) as well as the compliance programs for all home secured loan products. Greg also spent 15 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco as both a field examiner, and ultimately the Senior Manager responsible for overseeing the compliance performance of all state-member banks, bank holding companies, and financial holding companies in the 12 Western states.

Stephen Greenberg is the founder and chief executive officer of Synergistic Associates Inc., a national sales training and coaching organization. For a free consultation, or any questions, Steve can be contacted by email at steveg@synergisticassoc.com or by phone at 954-234-4320.

Ari Karen, an attorney at Offit Kurman, has counseled several mortgage banks and financial services firms on the development and implementation of policies and procedures related to allowing institutions to remain compliant with wage hour laws. He counsels clients in proactive and practical means of compliance with technical wage-hour laws and other labor and employment regulations. His litigation expertise includes unfair competition, fiduciary breach, partnership disputes, worker misclassification and minimum wage and overtime claims in all state and federal trial and appellate courts. He has spoken at several industry conferences.

Scott Gillen is Sr. Vice President, Strategic Initiatives for Stewart Lender Services. Mr. Gillen is responsible for oversight of Stewart's product development and strategy related to product implementation. Additionally, Mr. Gillen has direct management responsibilities over Stewart's Home Retention and Loss Mitigation initiatives. He oversees key client relationships as well as Stewart's GSE relationships. Prior to joining Stewart, Mr. Gillen served as Director of Sales and Marketing for Mortgage Resource Network (MRN). There his responsibilities included the ongoing management and oversight of MRN's sales and marketing efforts. Prior to that Mr. Gillen served in senior management positions with Harbor Financial Mortgage Corporation. In addition, Mr. Gillen pursued a private consulting career where he oversaw the liquidation of several large prime and subprime lenders and also assisted in several due diligence and audit projects.He is an active member in industry trade associations, serving as Vice Chairman of the Education Committee for the Mortgage Bankers Association and as a member of the Legislative Committee. He has also served on the Boards of the Houston Mortgage Bankers Association and Texas Mortgage Bankers Association. He received his BA degree from the University of Texas in Psychology and is a graduate of the MBA's School of Mortgage Banking and Future Leaders program. He also received the Certified Mortgage Banker (CMB) designation from the Mortgage Bankers Association of America.

Christina Speh works directly with financial institutions to help them minimize regulatory and operational risks through the use of improved enterprise risk management processes, policies and procedures as well as the use of technology. Christina has been with Wolters Kluwer Financial Services for more than 10 years, working with community, regional and national financial institutions to help them implement compliance risk management programs. Prior to Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, Speh was a review examiner for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, where she focused on Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) compliance by working with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council compliance committee and co-writing much of its guidance on the regulation. She was also a consultant at The Secura Group focusing on HMDA and CRA data analysis, compliance testing and fair lending comparative file reviews. Speh earned her B.B.A from Stetson University in Deland, Florida.

John Straka, Ph.D. counsels banks, mortgage servicers, government agencies, etc. on risk mitigation and growth strategies, models, systems, and standards. Prior to joining Experian, Straka held various leadership and analytic positions at Freddie Mac, most recently Vice President of customer facing models and analytics, leading teams responsible for all statistical scoring models, loss mitigation models and analytics, etc. He has worked over 25 years in analytics and risk management, earlier at the Social Security Administration and the Congressional Budget Office. Straka earned a B.A. in economics from Williams College and his Doctorate degree in economics from Cornell University.