The Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a United States government-sponsored enterprise that has been a publicly traded company since 1968. Founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal, the corporation was established to expand the secondary mortgage market. It does this by securitizing mortgage loans into mortgage-backed securities, which allows lenders to reinvest their assets into additional lending. This process effectively increases the number of mortgage lenders by reducing reliance on local savings and loan associations. Its brother organization is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, better known as Freddie Mac. As of 2025, Fannie Mae held over $4.3 trillion in assets, making it the largest company in the United States and the fifth largest company in the world by that metric. In the 2025 Fortune Global 500 rankings it placed 50th globally by total revenue. In terms of profit, Fannie Mae is the 17th most profitable company in the United States and the 32nd in the world. Wikipedia