Sonny Abbasi has joined Maxwell, a digital mortgage solutions platform serving more than 300 small and midsize lenders across the U.S., as general counsel.
The hire follows a recent $52.5 million additional funding round, with participation from Wells Fargo Strategic Capital. The firm is building out its senior team as it moves to its next phase.
Abbasi has more than 25 years of industry experience in legal and compliance functions of mortgage lending to the position, from origination and securitization to servicing and loss mitigation. Prior to joining Maxwell, he was general counsel and chief compliance officer at Lenderworks, a provider of consulting and infrastructure outsourcing solutions for the mortgage banking industry.
Abbasi started his career as an attorney at the Department of Housing and Urban Development Federal Housing Administration in Washington, D.C. and previously served as associate general counsel and director of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) policy at Fannie Mae for more than 10 years. Since then, he has worked as director of mortgage policy at Structured Finance Association and as general counsel for multiple in-house experiences at both large and small corporations.
In his new role with Maxwell, Abbasi will oversee all legal matters for the company, leading and managing the legal, compliance, and data protection functions.
Founded in 2015, Maxwell addresses the entire mortgage process from application to the secondary market through its Mortgage Optimization Platform, making it faster, cheaper, and more efficient for lenders and their borrowers. The company is growing rapidly and raised $52.5 million in additional funding in the fourth quarter, with participation from Wells Fargo Strategic Capital.
“Sonny comes to Maxwell at an inflection point of scale for our business and we’re very excited to welcome him to the team,” says John Paasonen, co-founder and CEO of Maxwell, in a release. “With his wealth of experience in regulation and compliance across the mortgage lifecycle, Sonny will be instrumental in helping us deliver powerful solutions to the needs of lenders across America’s communities.”