Daniel Wallace, who was most recently CEO of mortgage technology firm Haven Servicing, will become chief operating officer at the capital markets platform. Bill Decker, Maxex's president and co-founder, previously also held the COO title. The two companies will continue to work together.

The addition of a new position in the C-suite was driven by the non-agency trading platform's expansion, which could be on the brink of moving even faster.

"We want to accelerate the scale and trajectory of our growth and we need senior leadership to take advantage of the opportunity ahead of us," Tom Pearce, Maxex's chairman, CEO and co-founder,  said in an interview.

The move comes at an interesting time for mortgage trading done outside the parameters of what large government-related entities will buy, particularly given speculation the second Trump administration could resume previous efforts to weaken the enterprises' public ties.

"I see the shift in the marketplace with growth in the nonagency space and its participants and I'm here to help facilitate that," Wallace said in an interview.

Wallace added he has confidence in the long-term prospects for the growth of non-agency mortgage trading under either a Democratic or Republican administration in the future. 

While under recent Democratic administrations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have had closer government ties, the GSEs have still created boundaries related to the mortgages they will buy to support their public affordable-housing mission and those more appropriate for the private market.

Maxex runs an institutional platform that connects 340 non-agency loan sellers with loan buyers. These platform users have collectively engaged in more than $37 billion in transactions, including 185 private-label securitizations.

Haven is an industry vendor specializing in servicing technology that has worked to minimize disruptions in transfers.

It originally tapped Wallace as its leader in September of last year, so that co-founder and former CEO Jonathan Chao could develop a pre-close servicing transfer function.

Once that project was done, Chao was ready to resume the CEO role and Wallace became interested in working with Maxex.

"I'm really grateful for Wallace's partnership and excited to continue that in an even more effective capacity for both our roles," Chao said.

Before joining Haven, Wallace had been general manager of lending at Figure Technology Solutions, a nonbank blockchain specialist active in the home equity market. 

He also previously served as CEO of FirstKey Mortgage, which was part of Cerberus Capital Management's portfolio. FirstKey purchased loans from mortgage bankers.

Wallace additionally was a co-founder and managing partner at Capital Crossing, and a managing director at Lehman Brothers. While at the former company, Wallace oversaw the spinout and purchase of Capital Crossing Servicing company and a portfolio CC legacy assets.

His time at Lehman Brothers started in 1992 and ended in 2008.