Theodore W. (Ted) Tozer, President Barack Obama’s choice to take the helm as President of the Government National Mortgage Association, also known as Ginnie Mae, was sworn in February 24, 2010. Established by Congress in 1968, Ginnie Mae was designed to support the government’s housing programs by creating a secondary market to buy and sell residential mortgages. Ginnie Mae provides guarantees for mortgage-backed securities (MBS), most of which are federally insured loans issued by the Federal Housing Administration and other federal housing offices. In effect, the agency buys mortgages from lending institutions and pools them into government-backed securities, which it sells to investors, guaranteeing repayment on both the principal and the interest. The mortgage-backed securities underlying the 2008 financial crash were issued and backed by private lenders, but since their demise, Ginnie Mae has increased its participation in backing such securities.
Born in 1957, Tozer earned a B.S. in Accounting and Finance at Indiana University in 1979. He became a Certified Public Accountant in 1980 and a Certified Management Accountant in 1984.
He began working for
BancOhio National Bank in 1979 as Vice President and Investment Operations Manager, and its subsidiary BancOhio Mortgage Company in 1985. He remained there into 1989. In that year, he went to work for
National City Bank, which had acquired BancOhio in 1984. Tozer rose through the corporate ranks, eventually becoming Senior Vice President of Capital Markets at National City Mortgage, which later became part of PNC Financial Services Group. His responsibilities included daily pricing of loan products; managing interest rate risk of loans being held in inventory for future sales; designing loan products that are sellable into the capital markets; delivery and settlement of loan pools; and negotiating the sale of loan pools into the capital markets.
In May 2000, Tozer warned against the spread of adjustable rate mortgages, referring to them as “a disaster ready to come.”
During Tozer’s tenure, National City’s mortgage business was posting huge
losses, and the bank, which was worth less than $6 billion, faced about $20 billion in future losses on its current loans. In June 2008, National City entered into a
secret agreement with the
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency regarding capital levels, risk-management practices and other aspects of its business, effectively putting the bank on probation. In October 2008, National City was unable to obtain federal bank bailout money, and had to be sold to
PNC Bank for $5.6 billion even though it had been worth $25 million only a year earlier.
Tozer was a member of the Fannie Mae Midwest Secondary Advisory Group from 1994 to 1999 and a trustee of the
Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association from 1999 to 2001. He became a a member of Freddie Mac’s National Lender Advisory Board in 2002 and he served as chairman of the
Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) of America’s Secondary and Capital Markets committee from 2002 to 2004. During his time as Chairman, he also served on the MBA Residential Board of Governors and worked with Ginnie Mae in the
overhaul of the
GNMA II program. In 2008, Tozer became a charter member of of Fannie Mae’s National Lender Advisory Board.
Since 2000, Tozer has contributed $6,300 to political causes, including $1,000 to John McCain’s unsuccessful 2000 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, $500 to the Democratic-leaning
America Coming Together 527 Committee in 2004, and $4,550 to President Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Tozer is married to Sandy Tozer.
