webinar

Machine Learning in Building a Prepayment Model

Join RiskSpan financial model experts Janet Jozwik, Fan Zhang, and Lei Zhao to discuss how machine learning can help simplify prepayment models. They will discuss

  • Data:  Preprocessing the data and determining which variables are important to include in prepayment models
  • Modeling Approach:  Evaluating machine learning approaches
  • Model Performance: Opening the black box and tuning the model to improve performance

About The Hosts

Janet Jozwik

Managing Director – RiskSpan

Janet Jozwik helps manage quantitative modeling and data analysis groups at RiskSpan. Janet has a background in mortgage credit modeling, loss forecasting, and data analysis. Since joining RiskSpan, Janet has focused on loss forecasting and mortgage portfolio analytics for a key client as well as building a credit model using GSE loan-level data. Prior to joining RiskSpan, Janet was a financial economist at Fannie Mae where she specialized in single family credit pricing. Her work directly impacted the national guarantee fee pricing scheme and government programs to support the housing market during and after the financial crisis. Janet has extensive experience in analyzing massive datasets, a deep understanding of the drivers of credit risk, and an expertise in modeling mortgage cash flows. Janet holds an MBA from the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business and a BA in Economics from Johns Hopkins University. 

Fan Zhang

Director of Model Development

Fan Zhang has 12 years of quantitative finance experience specializing in behavioral modeling, fixed income analysis and, machine learning. At RiskSpan, Fan leads the quantitative modeling team where he is currently driving improvements to prepay modeling and application of cutting edge machine learning methods. Fan was a senior quantitative manager at Capital One where he worked on prepayment, deposit, MSR, auto, interest rate term structure, and economic capital modeling. He was also a senior financial engineer at Fannie Mae managing a team to validate model implementation and risk analytics. Fan holds an MBA from the University of Maryland and a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan.

Lei Zhao

Quantitative Modeling Analyst

Lei Zhao is a key member of the quantitative modeling team at RiskSpan. Lei has done extensive research on clustering methodologies and his postdoctoral research paper has been cited over a hundred times in scholarly publications. Lei holds a Master of Science degree in Financial Engineering from University of California, Los Angeles, and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Zhejiang University, China.