Treasuy Report Outlines Evolution of SPOC

Since 2011 when ""Treasury"":http://www.treasury.gov required the largest servicers to develop a ""single point of contact"" (SPOC) for all homeowners working through loss mitigation as part of the Making Home Affordable program, servicers have begun to implement the new standard in various ways.

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The Treasury noted in a recent report the nine largest servicers participating in the program have implemented three different SPOC models: the SPOC direct model, the SPOC pod model, and the SPOC appointment-based model.

The direct model is the most common of the three and has been adopted by seven of the nine servicers: Bank of America, CitiMortgage, GMAC Mortgage, Homeward Residential, JPMorgan Chase, Select Portfolio Servicing, and Wells Fargo.

In the direct model, an individual SPOC is assigned to a specific homeowner and is responsible for conducting all outbound communication with the customer and receiving all inbound communications from the customer.

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The seven servicers have different approaches, however, for when a particular SPOC is not available for inbound communications. Some allow the homeowner to leave a voicemail. Others redirect the homeowner's call to another available SPOC. However, those who are provided with the voicemail option may also request to speak to an alternate SPOC immediately.

OneWest Bank offers homeowners a ""pod"" or team of SPOCs to address their needs, rather than one individual SPOC. The pod allows homeowners more immediate access to a bank representative who can answer their questions and address their needs.

Each pod has a manager whom the homeowner may contact, but all team members have access to the homeowner's information in order to address his or her needs.

Additionally, each pod has assigned processors and underwriters who are available to help the SPOCs address homeowner needs.

The last model, the SPOC appointment-based model, is in place at Ocwen Loan Servicing.

At Ocwen, customer service representatives serve as intermediaries between homeowners and their SPOCs. When a homeowner calls the bank, he or she first speaks to a customer service representative who can either answer basic process-based questions or can set up an appointment for the homeowner to speak with his or her SPOC.

In total, the nine servicers Treasury observed have increased staffing and now have 12,000 SPOCs working to communicate with homeowners. About 6,000 more individuals are working to assist SPOCs by collecting and processing documents for homeowners.