The long-running debate over what happens to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after conservatorship has usually centered on one difficult question: how do policymakers recapitalize the mortgage giants without disrupting the housing-finance system that depends on them? Oksenholt Capital Management is offering a different answer. Its latest proposal would place the two government-sponsored enterprises under a publicly traded parent while keeping their charters, capital, management and mortgage businesses separate—a structure designed to combine shared infrastructure with continued competition.

The proposed structure, called USFTMC: One Parent, Two Charters, comes from Oksenholt Capital Management as a follow-up to an earlier white paper advocating a common publicly traded parent for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It is important to distinguish the proposal from government policy: USFTMC is an investment firm’s transaction blueprint, not an announced restructuring by the U.S. government or the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The idea nevertheless touches one of the most consequential pieces of U.S. financial infrastructure.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have remained under federal conservatorship since September 2008. FHFA says the two enterprises continue to operate under conservatorship, with Treasury providing financial support through the Senior Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements.

Their role extends well beyond the companies themselves. Fannie and Freddie purchase mortgages from lenders and either retain the loans or package them into mortgage-backed securities. The resulting liquidity allows banks, mortgage companies and other lenders to continue making new housing loans.

Oksenholt’s proposal attempts to separate the parts of the system that benefit from scale from those where competition is considered important.

Under the proposed model, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would remain separately chartered, separately capitalized and separately managed. They would continue making independent decisions about underwriting, pricing, credit policy, products, lender relationships and business plans.

The parent company, in other words, would not determine which enterprise wins a mortgage.

That distinction addresses one of the biggest potential objections to a common-parent structure: if two competitors ultimately report to the same corporate owner, does the market still have two meaningful competitors?

Oksenholt’s answer is that shared ownership does not necessarily require shared commercial decision-making.

There is already a precedent for separating infrastructure from competition.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac use a jointly developed Common Securitization Platform, through which the enterprises issue Uniform Mortgage-Backed Securities, or UMBS. FHFA describes the platform as infrastructure supporting both enterprises’ single-family mortgage securitization activities.

UMBS has effectively brought the two enterprises’ formerly separate mortgage-backed-security markets together. FHFA’s first-quarter 2026 monitoring report says UMBS issuance began in 2019 and that the common security has broadened and enhanced liquidity in the secondary mortgage market.

That creates an interesting precedent for the USFTMC argument.

The underlying mortgage businesses can remain competitors while selected infrastructure is standardized.

The proposal would apply that principle more broadly, suggesting that functions that do not determine who wins mortgage business could be shared when doing so reduces costs or creates operational efficiencies.

That could include technology, data infrastructure, analytics and other back-office functions.

The technology component is where the proposal becomes particularly relevant to financial technology.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s securitization infrastructure already handles far more than simply moving mortgage securities through a system. FHFA says the jointly owned U.S. Financial Technology, formerly Common Securitization Solutions, serves as the enterprises’ issuing agent and administrator for mortgage-backed securities, including disclosures, tax reporting and payment-related functions.

Oksenholt argues that this infrastructure could support a broader data, risk and analytics business while remaining neutral between the two enterprises.

That points toward a wider fintech question: could mortgage-market infrastructure become a technology asset in its own right?

The answer depends heavily on governance.

A shared platform controlling data, securitization workflows or analytics would need clear rules around access, neutrality, cybersecurity and competitive information. A system designed to improve efficiency could undermine competition if one enterprise gained preferential access to commercially sensitive information.

That makes the proposed separation between shared infrastructure and independent business decisions more than a corporate-structure detail. It is central to whether the model could work.

The proposal also takes a position on Treasury’s Senior Preferred Stock.

Oksenholt argues that the senior preferred position should be considered repaid in full—or that substantial payments already made to Treasury should be credited against it. The proposal does not call for converting the Senior Preferred into common equity.

That question is likely to become increasingly important in any serious discussion of recapitalization and release.

But the economics cannot be considered separately from mortgage-market stability.

A restructuring that materially disrupts the secondary mortgage market could affect lenders’ funding economics and, ultimately, borrowers’ access to mortgage credit. UMBS exists in part because standardization was intended to improve liquidity and reduce friction between the two enterprises’ securities markets. FHFA continues to monitor prepayment alignment because comparable cash-flow characteristics are important to maintaining UMBS liquidity.

That makes mortgage rates and market liquidity critical tests for any recapitalization strategy.

Oksenholt’s argument is that a larger public parent could potentially reduce duplication without dismantling the infrastructure that supports a unified UMBS market. It also argues that government support for the mortgage market should be preserved.

Whether those objectives can coexist is ultimately a policy and transaction question, not simply a technology question.

The proposal does, however, highlight an important feature of the modern housing-finance system: the most consequential assets may not be the brands or corporate entities themselves, but the infrastructure connecting lenders, mortgage data, securitization markets and institutional investors.

That infrastructure increasingly looks like fintech.

A future housing-finance architecture could involve more automated underwriting, real-time data validation, advanced risk analytics, machine-learning models, digital servicing and increasingly standardized securities infrastructure. Shared technology could reduce costs, but it could also concentrate operational and systemic risk.

The question is therefore not simply whether Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should have one parent or two.

It is whether the United States can create a housing-finance system that captures the benefits of shared infrastructure while preserving enough independent decision-making to keep lenders, investors and the two enterprises operating in a genuinely competitive environment.

That is the core challenge USFTMC puts on the table.

Oksenholt’s proposal is one possible blueprint. The larger debate remains firmly in the hands of policymakers, regulators, Treasury and the capital markets.

Market Landscape

The future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sits at the intersection of housing finance, securitization, financial technology and government-backed credit infrastructure.

Several forces are shaping the market:

• Conservatorship exit: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have remained under conservatorship since 2008, making recapitalization and release a longstanding policy issue.
• UMBS liquidity: The common UMBS market has integrated the enterprises’ mortgage-backed-security markets while retaining separate enterprise-level businesses.
• Shared fintech infrastructure: U.S. Financial Technology supports MBS issuance, disclosures and post-issuance administration for both enterprises.
• Competition versus scale: Any common-parent structure would need to demonstrate that operational efficiencies do not eliminate meaningful competition in mortgage pricing, underwriting and lender relationships.
• Data and analytics: Mortgage securitization infrastructure creates opportunities for standardized data, risk analytics and automation, but governance and information-sharing rules become increasingly important.

The larger trend is toward treating financial-market infrastructure as a technology layer. Housing finance is no exception.

Top Insights

• Oksenholt’s USFTMC proposal would place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under one publicly traded parent while preserving separate charters, capital and management.
• The proposal uses existing UMBS infrastructure as evidence that shared systems and competition can coexist within the secondary mortgage market.
• Borrower pricing, underwriting, lender relationships and credit policy would remain separate under the proposed structure.
• U.S. Financial Technology could become a larger data, risk and analytics platform if shared mortgage infrastructure expands beyond securitization administration.
• Any Fannie-Freddie restructuring must balance recapitalization and efficiency against mortgage-market liquidity, competition and systemic risk.

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