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Stewart Lender Services Announces Major Acquisition

""Stewart Lender Services"":http://www.stewart.com/lender-services (SLS) announced Monday the acquisition of a majority ownership of of ""PMH Financial,"":http://www.pmhfinancial.com/ a full-service REO outsource and subservicing company with an active inventory of $2.5 billion in real estate assets.

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SLS is a wholly owned subsidiary of ""Stewart Title Company,"":http://www.stewart.com/ a nationwide provider of centralized origination, loss mitigation and REO asset solutions.

PMH was previously majority owned by ""Braddock Holdings Co.,"":http://www.braddockholdings.com/ a private equity affiliate of ""Braddock Financial Corp."":http://www.braddockfinancial.com/ based in Denver.

With diversification as a key goal in both organizations, the transaction brings major benefits to each.

“This transaction represents a strategic acquisition for Stewart Lender Services,” said Jason Nadeau, president and CEO of Stewart Lender Services.

He continued, “PMH will provide a great deal of synergy with a number of Stewart clients and services.”

“PMH’s senior leadership team has some of the leading REO and servicing executives in our industry. We are very excited to have them join our team,” Nadeau added.

Nadeau notes that PMH’s management team consists of individuals experienced in not just REO, but also loss mitigation, servicing, subservicing, loan review, and due diligence.

He feels that PMH’s management team will complement SLS’s leadership team.

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“And then PMH gets the nationwide sales force that we have at SLS,” he adds.

Ken Glickstein, managing director of Braddock Holdings feels “it is a natural fit to pair SLS and PMH together.”

“It puts us with a parent company that has diversified products,” said Ken Blevins, president and CEO of PMH Financial.

Currently, REO constitutes more than 90 percent of PMH’s business, but a partnership with SLS “will allow us to grow well beyond what we could have before,” Blevins said.

PMH currently services 11 clients, with 90 percent of their inventory coming from Fannie Mae, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Residential Credit Solutions.

SLS has a substantial client base encompassing some of PMH’s clients along with other major servicers such as Citi, Wells Fargo, and Freddie Mac.

However, the overlap that does exist will not lead to any internal competition, according to Nadeau.

“One of the things that’s really nice about this transaction for us is we have a lot of the same clients and we have a lot of different clients, but amazingly enough, we didn’t run into any scenarios where we were both servicing the same client in the same space,” Nadeau said.

This acquisition comes just after Stewart launched a new boutique offering for small banks, community banks, and credit unions that have REO needs.

While this business is profitable, it does not bring in the revenue of SLS’s larger clients.

However, it does put local Stewart Title offices in a better position to serve their existing clients.

“It’s an underserved market, and it’s a market that traditionally didn’t hold a lot of REOs,” Nadeau said, but with the shift in the market, this boutique offering is a great relationship-builder for local Stewart offices.

Nadeau notes that diversifying is one of the a major initiative of SLS, and both the new boutique offering and the PMH acquisition indicate important strides in this area.

About Author: Krista Franks Brock

Krista Franks Brock is a professional writer and editor who has covered the mortgage banking and default servicing sectors since 2011. Previously, she served as managing editor of DS News and Southern Distinction, a regional lifestyle publication. Her work has appeared in a variety of print and online publications, including Consumers Digest, Dallas Style and Design, DS News and DSNews.com, MReport and theMReport.com. She holds degrees in journalism and art from the University of Georgia.
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