BREAKOUT SESSION: Evolution of Insurance Compliance Reviews and Technology

Vice President, Insurance, Berkadia

Laura Bushey is responsible for managing Berkadia’s global insurance servicing operations, including compliance monitoring and claims processing. Laura previously held asset management, client relations, and project management positions at Berkadia. Laura has a diverse knowledge of the various types of loans and servicing requirements across life companies, CMBS, commercial banks, private lenders, and agencies. Laura joined Berkadia and its predecessor companies in 2000 and have over 20 years of experience in the real estate industry.

Chie Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Advocate Technologies

Ashwin Agarwal is the CEO and Co-Founder of Advocate Technologies, a modern insurance consulting company leveraging world-class insurance consultants and technology to improve the insurance review process for commercial lenders. Ashwin has over 15 years of experience serving as a Board Member on insurance and reinsurance companies, as the lead insurance investor at a multi-billion private equity fund, and as a Mergers & Acquisitions investment banker at Goldman Sachs. In his career he has been a part of $10 billion+ of financing transactions as an investor. In these roles Ashwin advised the CEO’s of multi-national insurance companies on strategy, new product launches, and financings. At Advocate, Ashwin leads a team of 60+ insurance experts and technologists providing insurance reviews to lenders across pre-closings and servicing. His team oversees tens of thousands of loan reviews a year across commercial real estate including Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, HUD, CMBS, Construction, Bridge and other private lenders. He also directly oversees the product strategy and development of Advocate’s insurance compliance technology automation/AI platform which reduces loan time to close by 50% and improves the operational efficiency of reviews by 5x, delivering significantly lower insurance operational costs and high quality to lenders compared to legacy solutions.

Senior Risk Manager, MF Risk Management, Insurance, Fannie Mae Single Family

President and Chief Operating Officer, Resilience Insurance Analytics

Emily Rasmussen serves as President and Chief Operating Officer of Resilience Insurance Analytics, an insurance consulting firm specialized in advising the nation’s top commercial lenders, investment banks, investment trusts, and issuers of private credit on most of the market’s largest and most complex transactions. With a view across 8,000 deals a year spanning the Agency, Private label CMBS, SASB, CLO, construction, bridge and balance sheet spaces, Rasmussen offers broad and dynamic insight into evolving insurance coverage expectations across market sectors, as well as the challenges borrowers face in meeting them, and the realistic availability and acceptability of proposed alternatives to legacy lender insurance requirements. As President and COO, she and her experienced team are responsible for interfacing directly with commercial lenders, GSEs, rating agencies, master and special servicers, commercial borrowers, and insurance brokers, playing the role of ambassador, educator, and facilitator to each, with the ultimate goal of maintaining risk averse credit underwriting for lender clients. Prior to joining Resilience, Ms. Rasmussen spent seven years as a Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer at Harbor Group Consulting. While there, she applied her years spent as a CMBS closer to hone the transaction management skills of the insurance focused review team. Ms. Rasmusen holds a BA from Michigan State University and a JD from Villanova University school of Law. She is a member of the CREFC Women’s Network, the Chief network for women executive leaders, and a recent addition to the ASTM property resilience standards working group.