(Bloomberg) -- Commercial mortgage broker Meridian Capital Group named former banking regulator Brian Brooks as its new chief executive officer and chairman as the company seeks to navigate increased scrutiny on the market.

Brooks, a former acting comptroller of the currency, will replace Ralph Herzka, a Meridian co-founder who will take on a role as senior chairman, according to a statement Tuesday.

Meridian, a major broker in the market that’s worked with lenders including New York Community Bancorp Inc., has come under scrutiny from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with the government-sponsored enterprises instituting a pause on doing business with the company. Brooks said he will focus on building proper compliance and risk infrastructure at the firm, a process that will likely take 12 to 18 months.

“Obviously we need to reset that relationship and we need to build a risk infrastructure at Meridian that meets Freddie Mac’s expectations — that’s job one,” Brooks said in a phone interview. “We’ll be engaging on day one with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHFA to talk about ways we can improve the risk culture and ways that we can improve compliance to give them confidence.”

Brooks, 54, is taking over a major commercial mortgage brokerage that’s secured more than $550 billion in financing since its founding in 1991. Herzka, 62, will continue to play a key role at the company, according to the statement.

Brooks, who joins Meridian from law firm O’Melveny, has also worked at Fannie Mae. He was acting comptroller of the currency under former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who recently teamed up with other investors to inject New York Community Bancorp with more capital after it was roiled by a surprise dividend cut and provision build tied to commercial real estate loans.

During his time at Fannie Mae, Brooks helped overhaul its corporate governance structure, according to Meridian. He said he’s seeking to create platforms at the commercial mortgage broker to help build oversight and management of transactions.

“We want to make sure that the deals we do are the best deals out there, and nobody raises questions about them afterward,” Brooks said. 

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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with federal housing regulators, are looking into the commercial real estate market, while federal prosecutors are investigating landlords amid suspicions of mortgage fraud, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. 

Brooks said he expects that the entire commercial mortgage brokerage community will be examined by regulators. 

“We’re the biggest, we got looked at the first, and there’s obviously work to do to shore up confidence, which we’ll do,” he said. “In a lot of ways, it’s good to go first because it means we can build world-class risk systems and compliance systems before anybody else.”

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