Eric Kaplan

Eric Kaplan has spent more than three decades working at the intersection of housing finance, public policy, and economic empowerment, bringing government, industry, and nonprofit leaders together to build a sound, fair, and accessible housing finance system.

A senior advisor to the Milken Institute, Kaplan previously led the Institute’s Housing Finance and Policy Program. Before that, he spent nearly 20 years in mortgage finance and capital markets following five years of legal practice. In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, he became a leading national voice on mortgage reform. Kaplan launched and chaired the Structured Finance Association’s (SFA) RMBS 3.0 Task Force – the industry’s primary mortgage-backed securities reform effort – and co-chaired a working group within the US Treasury’s private-label securitization reform initiative. A former board member of SFA and the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO), Kaplan serves on MISMO’s senior advisory board, engages widely with housing stakeholders, and advises mortgage and consumer finance, FinTech, and AI companies.

Kaplan’s conviction that financial literacy is key to household financial strength and housing stability brought him to Operation HOPE, where he served as executive vice president and as the inaugural president of its Financial Literacy for All initiative from 2022 through 2024. He also helped build and launch HOPE’s AI Ethics Council as its managing director, and remains a committed ally of HOPE and its mission.

Appointed to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board, Kaplan served as its chair from 2020 to 2021, advising bureau leadership through the COVID-19 pandemic. He recently completed a five-year term on the board of Kroll Bond Rating Agency and was a partner at Ranieri Strategies, a FinTech-focused private equity firm led by mortgage securitization pioneer Lewis Ranieri.

Kaplan holds an AB in politics from Princeton University and a JD from Boston University School of Law.