Lisa Pendergast to Step Down as CREFC Chief

Lisa Pendergast, who has led the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council for a decade, will retire in August, CREFC has announced.

During Pendergast’s tenure, the organization has increased its membership more than 30 percent to 19,000 individuals and 400-plus companies, CREFC noted in a statement. Pendergast’s priorities have ranged from enhancing the group’s authoritative position with elected officials and regulators to boosting industry standards and encouraging collaboration among diverse industry stakeholders.

In a recent CPE podcast, CREFC’s CEO detailed the unexpected path that led to a career as one of the industry’s top finance analysts and, ultimately, to the organization’s leadership. Pendergast initially planned to attend law school and needed a job in the interim while she applied. At a friend’s suggestion, she landed a writing position in Prudential Securities’ financial strategies group.

“For the first year of my career, they’d throw me in a room with one of these rocket scientists and they would talk to me and they’d say, ‘OK, now go write it,’” Pendergast recalled during the episode of CPE’s “Investment Matters” podcast. As a research analyst, she specialized in the residential MBS market, writing reports on securitization structures and other technical topics. She characterized the experience at Prudential Securities as “the cheapest MBA anybody ever got.”

The job that began as a bridge to law school led to a 30-year career as a financial analyst. After her time at Prudential, Pendergast moved on to senior roles at institutional financial services companies. She was a managing director at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Next, she served as a managing director & head of CMBS strategy and risk at Jefferies Group. Before taking her current role at CREFC, Pendergast was a nine-year member of the organization’s board of governors and served its 2010-2011 president. She was named CREFC’s executive director in 2016. Along the way, Pendergast has contributed articles to academic journals and industry handbooks.  

Policy priorities

On the policy front, affordability is one of her top concerns. During the CPE podcast, Pendergast offered an out-of-the-box idea for addressing the crisis: get the GSEs directly involved in expanding inventory.

“I would love to see the GSEs do some form of construction loan just like Ginnie Mae does,” she said. “If you’re really looking to enhance housing, then why not do something like that?”

Construction financing is beyond the GSEs’ current scope, and while Pendergast noted that implementation would require safeguards, she’s hopeful that discussions will continue. “I very much like going to the Hill and speaking to congressmen and senators, as well as to regulators, as to what’s going on in the market,” she related.

Advocating for the CRE finance industry is one of Pendergast’s main responsibilities, but she has always taken great satisfaction in finance research and analysis: “I love the digging for data as well as the ability to hopefully convey that to people in a way that’s meaningful.”