Better Home & Finance Holding Co., the AI-focused mortgage lender that has spent two months in a boardroom fight with its founder, has added former X chief executive Linda Yaccarino to its board as an independent director, effective Oct. 15, 2026, the company announced in a Business Wire release. The appointment is the first board seat filled under what the company now calls “Better 2.0,” and it arrives as the Nasdaq-listed lender works to fix a governance gap the exchange flagged earlier this month.
Yaccarino, who ran X’s business operations as CEO, will focus on three priorities, according to the release: using Better’s Tinman software platform “to help more Americans own a home,” holding the company to “strict cost discipline,” and driving long-term shareholder value.
Why Better needs an independent director now
The timing traces directly to the outcome of founder Vishal Garg’s consent solicitation. Garg, who left the CEO post on Aug. 3, delivered written consents on Sept. 30 from holders of a majority of Better’s voting power, removing directors Daniel Lewis, Arnaud Massenet, Bhaskar Menon, Prabhu Narasimhan and Harit Talwar without cause, according to a Form 8-K filed Oct. 6. The inspector of election certified roughly 13.63 million consents for each removal against about 30,000 opposed. That result came even though two proxy advisers had recommended against Garg’s bid.
Director Hugh Frater resigned once the removals took effect, and director Michael Farello had resigned on Sept. 28, the filings show. That left Garg as the sole remaining director. On Oct. 5 he appointed four people to fill vacancies: Bing Gordon, Steven Sarracino, the company’s general counsel Paula Tuffin, and Nicholas Calamari, a Better employee. The reconstituted board then removed Lewis as interim CEO the same day and began searching for a successor.
Two of those four appointees are company insiders, and Better told Nasdaq on Oct. 5 that it no longer met the exchange’s listing rules requiring a majority-independent board and a three-member audit committee made up entirely of independent directors. In a Form 8-K/A filed Oct. 14, Better said Nasdaq’s written notice, received Oct. 13, gives it until Nov. 27, 2026, to submit a plan to regain compliance; if Nasdaq accepts the plan, it may grant up to 180 calendar days from the notice to show compliance. The notice has no immediate effect on the listing, the company said.
Better’s release does not tie Yaccarino’s appointment to the Nasdaq notice, and it does not say whether she will join the audit committee. On our reading of the filings, though, an independent director is exactly what the board was short of, and the audit-committee rule alone calls for three of them.
What Yaccarino and Garg said
“Better is making life’s largest financial decision for an American family more affordable, more accessible, and more transparent with AI,” Yaccarino said in the release. “When we were building X Money, I saw how friction in financial services affects the lives of hardworking American families, and the single greatest friction is what families experience when getting a mortgage.”
Garg, whose title is now founder and head of product, platform and innovation, said Yaccarino’s “extensive experience in enterprise partnerships, advertising and consumer behavior serves Better very well,” adding that “Better 2.0 is about scaling what we’ve built so more Americans can own a home.”
Before X, Yaccarino spent more than a decade as chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, where the company says she oversaw nearly $10 billion in annual advertising revenue, and two decades at Turner, rising to executive vice president and chief operating officer of advertising sales, marketing and acquisitions for Turner Entertainment.
A rough quarter behind the reshuffle
The board change lands a day after Better put out preliminary third-quarter results. Loan volume was $1.395 billion, up 15.3% from a year earlier but down 16.3% from the second quarter, and at the low end of guidance of $1.375 billion to $1.525 billion. Total net revenue of $45.1 million missed guidance of $49 million to $52 million. The preliminary adjusted EBITDA loss of $24.8 million to $25.8 million was wider than the $15 million to $18 million loss Better had guided to, and included about $8 million of proxy-related legal, PR and other costs, the company said. The net loss is expected to be $33.1 million to $34.1 million.
Garg blamed the miss on the prior board and interim CEO, saying in the release that the proxy fight “tanked volume and revenue by 13%.” Chief Financial Officer Loveen Advani pointed to “interest rate headwinds” alongside the proxy contest. Better has set a goal of adjusted EBITDA breakeven by year-end and published a weekly scorecard on Oct. 13 listing about $13.2 million in annualized cost cuts already implemented and $51 million more targeted over the next four weeks. It also said it intends to sell its U.K. bank, which it expects to bring in about $65 million of cash on closing in the first quarter of 2027.
The next markers are concrete: naming a new interim CEO, which the Oct. 13 scorecard said had advanced to legal documentation with an identified candidate, and filing the Nasdaq compliance plan by Nov. 27. Readers can follow the rest of the lender’s moves in our mortgage coverage.
