Hold
Fractional Chief Appraiser
A named appraisal authority on your org chart, without the seat.
The problem
Most lenders below a few billion in annual origination have no chief appraiser and no plan to hire one. Appraisal is somebody's third responsibility. It works until an examiner, an investor, or a plaintiff asks who owns collateral, at which point the honest answer is that nobody does, and the file says so.
A fractional arrangement puts a named, credentialed, accountable appraisal authority into that seat at a fraction of the cost of filling it, and puts a real name in the box on your org chart.
What the role covers
- Named designated appraisal subject-matter expert where policy, an investor, or an agency requires one.
- Reconsideration-of-value escalation review: the gate before a request reaches an appraiser.
- Complex, disputed, and escalated collateral files.
- Appraiser independence questions in real time, when someone is about to send an email they should not send.
- Panel and vendor performance review on a standing cadence.
- Policy currency: agency, investor, and standards changes reflected in your documents before they are found missing.
- Examination and audit support on collateral findings.
- Staff training on independence, review, and reconsideration handling.
What it does not cover
I do not perform appraisals for retainer clients, do not accept appraisal assignments from them, and do not hold any interest in a vendor on their panel. The role is oversight. The moment it becomes production, the independence that makes it worth having is gone.
How it works
- Monthly retainer.
- Six-month minimum, then month to month with thirty days' notice.
- A standing monthly cadence and a quarterly review.
- Named designated subject-matter expert where your policy requires one.
- Access Level 3, with full third-party risk onboarding.
- Fee basis
- Monthly retainer, quoted in the engagement
- Term
- Six-month minimum, then month to month, thirty days' notice
- Cadence
- Standing monthly session plus a quarterly review
- System access
- Level 3 (embedded, full third-party risk onboarding)
Questions
Do you hold retainers with our competitors?
Possibly, and I will tell you before we sign. What I will not do is carry your file into anyone else's engagement. Client information does not travel, and the engagement letter says so in terms you can enforce.
How much of your time do we get?
The cadence is written into the engagement: the standing monthly session, the quarterly review, and escalation coverage between them. What it is not is an on-call production resource, and the engagement letter is explicit about the difference.
Can the retainer absorb an examination?
Examination and audit support on collateral findings is inside the role. A finding that turns into a program rebuild becomes a scoped engagement, quoted separately, before any work starts.
What happens when we outgrow it?
You hire a chief appraiser, and the handover is part of the role. A fractional seat that resists being replaced by a full-time one is protecting the wrong thing.
If nobody owns collateral on your org chart, that is the conversation to have before an examiner has it for you.
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