ACB Renews Partnerships with GSEs and Countrywide.(America's Community Bankers with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Countrywide Home Loans.)

America's Community Bankers has renewed its secondary mortgage market partnerships with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Countrywide Home Loans.

Now in its fourth year, the pact with Fannie Mae is the cornerstone of the ACB's mortgage solutions program, which is designed to allow community banks to provide their customers with loan options they might not otherwise be able to offer.

The alliances with Freddie Mac are in its third year, as is the arrangement with Countrywide, which offers members an outlet for nonconforming loans.

The partnerships mean that "community banks will never have to turn away a qualified borrower," Curtis Hage, chairman of ACB Business Partners Inc., the subsidiary which runs the initiative, said here last week at the group's annual National Real Estate Lending Conference.

Since the program's inception in 2001, ACB members have delivered more than $50 billion in mortgages to the three partners, the association said.

"Through the negotiating power of ACB," said Mr. Hage, chairman of Home Federal Bank, Sioux Falls, S.D., and a former ACB chairman, participants "have collectively accrued bottom-line value of more than $85 million."

The group also has arrangements with Principal Residential Mortgage and Financial Freedom Senior Funding Corp. as outlets for nonconforming loans ...