After a long career in the Bay Area, including time at Electronic Arts, Apple, and Redfin (where he led the product team), Andy started his first company, Approved, in the mortgage tech space while an Entrepreneur in Residence at the renowned VC firm, Social Capital. After raising a seed round and spending a few years building the company, the product, and the team, Approved parlayed a potential customer, Credit Karma, into a potential acquirer when he sold the company. He ran the Mortgage and New Business teams as a VP & General Manager at CK for four years, and now he’s back at building another company at RetroRate, leveraging assumable loans to get more buyers into homes, and unlock the market for sellers, agents and other real estate professionals alike.

He graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Stanford, and hopped across the bay for an MBA from Berkeley. When he’s not busy on the startup, he can be found most days chasing his children around sunny San Diego.

Joel Kan serves as Vice President, Deputy Chief Economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association. In this role, he is responsible for MBA’s macroeconomic and housing market forecasts and oversees the production of MBA’s industry surveys, including the Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey, Builder Applications Survey, and Mortgage Credit Availability Index – three of the association’s high-profile surveys. Mr. Kan presents regularly on the economy and housing market at MBA and industry events, and is interviewed and quoted frequently in national, local and industry media outlets. 

Prior to joining the MBA, he worked in Ernst & Young’s Quantitative Economics and Statistics (QUEST) group. He holds a B.Sc. in Economics and Statistics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.