Ryan McBride Expands Role as CIO of RWT Horizons Venture

Redwood Trust, Inc. (NYSE: RWT) a leader in expanding access to housing for homebuyers and renters, today announced two technology investments under its recently launched RWT Horizons venture, a strategy focused on early and mid-stage companies driving innovation in financial and real estate technology, and digital infrastructure. Investments made through Horizons are designed to support companies whose technologies are accretive to Redwood’s businesses, including its residential and business-purpose lending platforms.

The company also announced that Ryan McBride, the Chief Operating Officer at CoreVest (a Redwood Trust company and the market’s leading lender to residential real estate investors) has expanded his responsibilities and taken on the additional role of Chief Investment Officer of RWT Horizons. In this position, Ryan will lead the development and execution of the RWT Horizons strategy for capital deployment and strategic partnerships.

RWT Horizons recently made its first investments in two early-stage technology companies, both with strong ties to the burgeoning residential rental market. The first transaction included an investment in Rent Butter, a Chicago-based firm developing a proprietary tenant screening tool that allows landlords to efficiently evaluate prospective tenants and meaningfully reduce defaults and evictions. The second transaction included an investment in Rentroom, a New York-based software-as-a-service company that offers an easy to use, turnkey property management platform designed for small and mid-sized landlords and their tenants.

Christopher Abate, Chief Executive Officer of Redwood Trust commented, “RWT Horizons is an important element of our enterprise-wide technology strategy, that we believe will drive innovations across both our residential and business-purpose lending platforms. Through the Horizons initiative, we invest directly in companies strategically aligned with our business, whose technologies we believe can create new efficiencies across the mortgage value chain. In the case of Rent Butter and Rentroom, these disruptive solutions were sourced directly through CoreVest’s existing borrower network.”

Abate continued, “New partnerships forged through RWT Horizons will enhance our technology roadmap and drive innovation that supports continued best-in-class customer service, revenue growth, and increased market share. We are happy to see the positive market response to Horizons and excited for Ryan to lead this initiative, given his background in technology and experience in building companies in the lending and real estate space.”