Mr. Cooper Group (the company formerly known as Nationstar) revealed this week that it completed its acquisition of IBM’s Seterus mortgage servicing platform in a deal that will add 300,000 new customers to Mr. Cooper’s servicing portfolio.
The deal was originally announced early this year. At the time, Mr. Cooper said that the deal included $24 billion in government-sponsored enterprise mortgages and a subservicing contract for $24 billion.
And according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Cooper finalized the acquisition on Feb. 28, 2019.
“We are excited to welcome more than 300,000 customers and the Seterus team to the Mr. Cooper Group family,” Mr. Cooper Group Chairman and CEO Jay Bray said when the deal was first announced.
“We are confident our new team will be energized by our people-first culture, and our new customers will benefit from our user-friendly mobile and online tools designed to help them manage their home finances,” Bray continued. “This transaction is consistent with our outlook for profitability targets and portfolio growth.”
IBM’s Global Business Services’ Jay Bellissimo the company’s ownership of Seterus had run its course and IBM sought to place the company with a more experienced mortgage servicing outfit.
“IBM acquired Seterus in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to help a client manage a portfolio of distressed loans. We were successful in this mortgage servicing work and the portfolio is now much more stable,” Bellissimo said earlier this year.
“The time is now right to divest this business, which is no longer core to IBM’s portfolio, to a mortgage servicing specialist whose domain expertise and scale can further advance this business,” Bellissimo added.
Now, Seterus is a Mr. Cooper company.
And while Mr. Cooper is adding 300,000 new mortgage servicing customers in the deal, it won’t be bringing 310 of Seterus’ employees with them. Shortly after the deal was initially announced, it was revealed that IBM would be laying off 310 employees at a Seterus facility in North Carolina.
According to a notice from the North Carolina Department of Commerce, the layoffs take effect on March 11, 2019.
Financial terms of the Seterus deal were not disclosed.
