BOK Financial Acquires Rights to Service $4 Billion of Mortgages

""BOK Financial Corp."":http://www.bokf.com in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has acquired the rights to service a $4.1 billion portfolio of mortgage loans from Albuquerque, New Mexico's ""Charter Bank"":http://www.charterco.com. The acquisition boosts BOK's current $7.4 billion servicing portfolio by 46 percent.

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The 34,400 loans are predominantly held by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. Approximately three quarters are with customers in New Mexico, where BOK operates its ""Bank of Albuquerque"":http://www.bankofalbuquerque.com subsidiary. The remainder are from Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arizona, Colorado, and Idaho.

""We have a local presence in Albuquerque, with a local mortgage team to meet future mortgage needs. In addition, ""Our mortgage servicing team is very talented and we already service loans for most of these markets represented by this acquisition,"" said Ben Cowen, President of BOK Financial's mortgage group.

The acquisition follows a 2009 fiscal year in which BOK Financial's mortgage group funded just over $3 billion in loans, up sharply from $1.3 billion in 2008.

Although the acquisition is complete, the actual transfer of mortgage loans will take place in early April.

The ""original Charter Bank was shut down"":http://dsnews.comarticles/regulators-seize-control-of-five-community-banks-2010-01-25 by the Office of Thrift Supervision last month. The FDIC sold the bank to Beal Financial Corp. of Plano, Texas, but Beal elected to keep the Charter Bank name.

According to the _New Mexico Business Weekly_, both BOK and the original Charter Bank had been servicing loans for the ""New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority"":http://www.housingnm.org. The organization’s executive director told the paper that BOK is taking over that function for the state housing authority.

The _Business Weekly_ reported that the original Charter Bank began negotiating in December 2009 to sell its loan servicing operation to BOK.