Fintech Sagent hired Jaime Gow, a former executive at Mr. Cooper and First Horizon Bank, as its new chief financial officer. The hiring coincided with the departure of the company’s chief technology officer, Uday Devalla.
Warburg Pincus-backed Sagent highlighted Gow’s background in servicing as a reason for hiring him. That’s the exact space in the mortgage industry that the company wants to target with its software platform, Dara, which was launched in February.
Gow will oversee financial operations, lead strategic planning and dealmaking with customers, and ensure long-term investment in Sagent’s platforms, including Dara, the company said.
Sagent CEO Geno Paluso, a retired U.S. Navy captain who served at BAE Systems until joining the company in February, noted that Gow has led different lending businesses, including de novo banks, regional banks and industry leaders like Mr. Cooper.
Gow also “knows every detail that mortgage servicers need to win, and he’ll make Sagent a stronger-than-ever strategic partner to our customers and prospects,” Paluso added.
Gow comes to Sagent after serving as executive vice president and strategic adviser at Mr. Cooper, which has a close relationship with Sagent as exemplified by a multiyear agreement signed in February 2022. Mr. Cooper sold certain intellectual property rights for its cloud-based technology platform to Sagent and received a minority equity stake in the fintech company.
Chris Marshall was another executive who transitioned between the two companies this year. The former vice chairman and president of Mr. Cooper became executive chairman of Sagent in January.
Mr. Cooper is also the first client on the Dara platform, which is expected to be fully implemented in early 2025.
“Sagent’s new Dara platform can lower servicer operational costs across all mortgage servicing areas, like boarding, cash processing, escrows, call center, loss mitigation, and claims,” Gow said in a statement. “A big part of my job is to help our customers and prospects find and maximize these efficiencies in their own operations.”
In another executive move at Sagent, CTO Uday Devalla departed four months after launching Dara. In a social media post, he said that July 12 was his last day at the company.
“Over the past 4+ years, I’ve had an incredible experience working at Sagent, leading the technology and production teams driving much-needed innovation in the $14 trillion mortgage servicing sector,” Devalla wrote.
A spokesperson at Sagent told HousingWire that Devalla left “to pursue new opportunities.”
“He’s been an integral teammate who helped create our multi-year execution strategy to modernize our industry. Key to this execution was assembling a world-class mortgage servicing fintech team — including senior leaders — to build our Dara vision and innovate today’s platforms for customers. This global team runs day-to-day operations, and we’re vetting candidates to replace Uday’s role,” the spokesperson wrote.
