Nigeria’s mortgage refinancing coy announces retirement of pioneer CEO

The Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) has announced the retirement of Charles Inyangete, a professor and its pioneer managing director/chief executive officer, after three and a half years of meritorious service on attaining the statutory retirement age of 60.

Inyangete joined the company in November 2014, following the incorporation of NMRC as a key component of the Nigeria Housing Finance Programme (NHFP) funded under a US$300 million IDA Facility from the World Bank Group.

During his tenure he saw the growth of the company from a 3-man start up charged with launching unto a nascent and very challenging Nigerian mortgage market with a clear mandate to grow the primary and secondary mortgage markets and promote home ownership in Nigeria to a sector leader.

Under his watch, the NMRC’s executed the first mortgage-backed bond issuance (N440 billion) programme on the African continent in July 2015, backed by an conditional guarantee of the Federal Government of Nigeria. The N8 billion raised from that exercise was deployed to the refinancing of legacy and new mortgages of NMRC member banks that conform to NMRC’s uniform underwriting standards for the formal sector, another transformative product developed by NMRC.

The NMRC also took the lead in developing partnerships with state governments, as the points where the rubber meets the road in housing provision, including advocating for a draft Model Mortgage and foreclosure law to state actors for review and passage, as the fulcrum for a robust housing market and enhanced home ownership, which would not only benefit the citizenry but also impact state internally generated revenues.

Inyangete encouraged NMRC’s robust partnerships with other key stakeholders in the housing industry, leading to strong, research, advocacy-based agreements with MBAN (Mortgage Banking Association of Nigeria), REDAN (Real Estate developers of Nigeria), FGSHLB (Federal Government Staff housing Loans Board) in addition to several transaction-driven agreements with major developers geared at growing affordable housing supply around the country.