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As part of their day-to-day work, many Freddie Mac employees contribute their expertise by developing novel solutions for the housing industry — and many receive patents for their innovative work.  We honor those employees whose efforts lead to Freddie Mac patents with our Inventor Recognition Award. 

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For more than 15 years, Ankur Shah, Freddie Mac’s associate general counsel, has been a key member of the Legal Division team that protects our innovative efforts and intellectual property. Along with Audrey Perry, Carol Brandt and Will Dean, this team has helped inventors across the company receive patents and thereby protected the company products and services that help give our business its   competitive edge.

“I love that we get to work with creative people from all over Freddie Mac to help them protect their innovations,” says Ankur. “If we can secure a patent, not only does it become a valuable asset for the company and protect our freedom to operate, but it’s also great recognition for the employees that stays with them for the rest of their careers.”

For the past two decades, Freddie Mac has presented its Inventor Recognition Award to the employees who have received patents and made their mark on Freddie Mac’s operations. Last month, Freddie Mac honored 16 such employees, reflecting their work on several innovative products and projects. “It is a pleasure to be able to recognize some of our most innovative employees with the Inventor Recognition Award,” said Heidi Mason, EVP and General Counsel. Here are three of the success stories. 


NextGen Linking Service: Mitigating Inaccuracies Through Optimization


When Freddie Mac’s Submission Link Service (SLS), which is used to link submission data across the Loan Advisor Suite platform, was launched in 2015, it relied on a series of hard-coded rules. The service linked loan submissions with an accuracy of roughly 96%. 

Fast forward to 2020, at which point the need for a more flexible and reliable linking system arose. Sukhdeep Sherry, a product owner senior manager in the Single-Family division, and her team rose to the occasion, deciding to overhaul the SLS’s matching logic from the ground up. By using supervised machine learning and training AI models, Sukhdeep and Annette Best, a vice president in our Single-Family Innovation Lab, along with a team of Freddie Mac employees, helped to launch NextGen SLS, which has been able to increase matching accuracy to 99%. 

“I was eager to work on taking this endeavor from a pioneering concept to an inventive working solution,” Sukhdeep said. “Although I was not involved in the beginning, the need for creativity and innovation continued well into implementation as we tweaked the starting concept to the eventual business-critical solution that is in place today.”  


Geographic Information System Database Tool: Managing Risk with Data-Driven Decisions


Four years ago, Fabio Quijada, a quantitative analytics senior manager in the Single-Family division, recognized an opportunity to further mitigate risk. Because there are several factors that contribute to the overall price of a property, it’s often difficult to properly weigh the risk of each factor. To solve for this, he began devising his Geographic Information System Database Tool. 

The tool, which has since launched, seeks to mitigate risk by establishing correlative relationships between properties and their geographic attributes — including proximity to major highways, attractions and other points of interest. It includes additional geospatial data that can help Freddie Mac more accurately gauge the value of properties over time.

“Freddie Mac is in the business of managing risk. A key component of our risk management framework is to accurately quantify the value of the collateral that underly the mortgages we purchase,” Fabio said. 

Given that there are several factors that contribute to the overall price of a property, it’s often difficult to account for all of them in a way that properly weighs each of their impact. Taking this into consideration, Fabio included other valuable geospatial data points to more accurately gauge the value of the properties for years to come.

“This invention is primarily aimed at improving the quality of Freddie Mac’s price prediction models by incorporating features that can be extracted from geospatial map data,” he said.


eNote Validation: Streamlining Our Services


Since 2020, eMortgages have grown in popularity. But with greater demand for these digital mortgages came the need to reduce friction and increase accessibility in the process. When challenged by the lack of automation in the eNote certification process, Rajasekhar Penugonda, a project management director in the Single-Family division, and his team tackled this issue head-on. They rose to the occasion, led work among cross-functional teams and created a solution.

Through this innovation, Freddie Mac can better serve the needs of seller/servicers that are delivering and servicing eMortgages, improve efficiency in the quality control process and reduce costs. 

“This innovation shows how Freddie Mac cross-functional teams can work together to create path-breaking solutions that improve operational efficiencies and reduce risk for the industry,” Rajasekhar said.


Freddie Mac’s recent Inventor Recognition Award recipients


  • NextGen Linking Service
    • Annette Best, VP, Single-Family Innovation Lab
    • Domenico Cacciavillani, Business Process Senior Director
    • Deanna Dabney, Data Analytics Senior Director
    • Deepthi Ganta, Data Analytics Manager
    • Matthew Maycott, VP, Portfolio Product Owner, Automated Underwriting and Risk Assessment
    • Samuel Oliver, VP, Single-Family Product Delivery
    • Thomas Schweikert, Strategic Transformation Senior Director
    • Sukhdeep Sherry, Product Owner Senior Manager
  • Geographic Information System Database Tool
    • Fabio Quijada, Quantitative Analytics Senior Manager
  • eNote Validation
    • Kathleen Scanlon, Project Management Director
    • David Owens, Operational Change Management Senior Director
    • Rajasekhar Penugonda, Project Management Director
    • Raghu Kurlagunda, Chief Development Lead
  • Collateral Selection Optimization
    • Menner Tatang, VP Portfolio Analytics and Strategy
  • Employees with Patent Pending Applications
    • Tatyana Krol, Data Analytics Senior Director
    • Chengcheng Xiong, Data Analytics Manager

Looking for career opportunities where you’ll work with industry-leading professionals and services?   Explore open opportunities at Freddie Mac today. 
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