Steve Thomas, former senior managing director, mortgage capital markets, for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, has launched FutureWave, a new minority-owned national correspondent lender.
“Lenders need a product-focused approach to grow their residential mortgage business as we are undergoing a secular shift from the rate-driven refinance market that dominated the industry for most of our careers,” Thomas says in a release. “We are using our vast resources, infrastructure, technical knowledge, and numerous industry relationships to partner and deliver a wide variety of mortgage loan products – with expert pricing – to service that need.”
While at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago (FHLBC) Thomas and his team helped provide liquidity for various residential mortgage products to hundreds of small community bank and credit union sellers annually. He held many additional roles, including chair of the MPF Capital Markets Committee, co-director of the FHLBC Office of Diversity and Inclusion, co-founder of the FHLB Capital Markets Supplier Diversity Committee, and member of the FHLB Housing Finance Reform Task Force.
Prior to the FHLBC, Thomas founded and managed the Mortgage Finance Group at CastleOak Securities which became the top-ranked minority-owned investment banking firm in residential MBS, commercial MBS, consumer ABS and Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHLB agency debt markets. He has also held officer level roles in capital markets at several firms including Fannie Mae and Countrywide Home Loans.
Thomas currently serves as a board member and treasurer of Mercy Housing-Lakefront, a part of Mercy Housing, the nation’s largest non-profit developer and owner of affordable housing; co-chair of the National Housing Conference’s National Advisory Council; and a member of Quontic Bank’s Black and Hispanic Community Development Advisory Board.
He also serves as the vice chair of Quontic’s Community Development Financial Institution Advisory Board.
Thomas began his career as a Naval Officer in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and is a 1992 Navy ROTC midshipman graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.