Ian Rehmert, Ph.D.

Ian Rehmert has succeeded in making an impact within a number of different organizations across the financial, defense, internet, and transportation industries. He joined Republic Finance in 2018, where he currently serves as the Chief Risk Officer and Chief Risk Officer responsible for credit performance, marketing strategy, digital transformation, centralized operations, and the project management functions across all enterprise activities. Founded in 1952, Republic Finance is a rapidly growing consumer lending company serving approximately 300,000 customers in over 200 communities.

Rehmert started his financial services career in 2003 by joining HSBC Consumer Lending where he expanded his responsibility over his 7-year tenure to the position of SVP of Servicing Analytics. He spent the next 8 years within Capital One Home Loans as a Credit Officer where he ultimately served as the Head of Mortgage Credit and Underwriting after a diverse set of leadership roles across combinations of marketing, loss mitigation, analytics, and operations.

Rehmert’s early career focused on managing risk and loss mitigation efforts, where he helped both Capital One and HSBC navigate the mortgage crisis by developing strategies, building teams, and managing operations that kept tens of thousands of customers in their homes, stabilized loan portfolio performance, and improved expected losses in excess of $2B. From 2003 to 2010, he built and led a strategy and analysis function consisting of more than 100 analytical and technical professionals within HSBC North America. With no precedent at the leading edge of the mortgage crisis, Ian’s team rapidly developed an innovative program to evaluate mortgage portfolios and deliver loan-level recommendations on the optimal terms for a loan modification. This program was deployed across the $100B+ real estate portfolio under management. Articles in both BusinessWeek and American Banker mentioned this work in 2008, which subsequently earned a US Patent titled "Methods and Systems for Proactive Loan Modification”. Ian then joined Capital One where he built the home loans loss mitigation strategy through two major bank acquisitions.  His responsibility then increased to include leading all loss mitigation operations prior to his transition into the lending side of the business. The customer-focused solutions his team designed and executed helped to avoid material quality issues that plagued many other mortgage-servicing businesses and cut expected losses in half.

He earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech with a concentration in Operations Research. He also played intercollegiate lacrosse as a defenseman during all four years of his undergraduate study with his brother, John, by his side as a goalie in his senior year. He lives just north of Dallas, Texas with his wife, Katie, and their two children, Chloe and Jonathan. He enjoys spending time with family, travelling, rooting for the Hokies, going to concerts, and collecting wine.