Lender Processing Services Adds American Home

Signaling that the integration of American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. and the former Option One Mortgage Co. servicing platform is progressing, the two companies have settled on a single servicing platform to manage the more than 475,000 loan files serviced between them. Both servicers are owned by private-equity funds ultimately controlled by WL Ross & Co. LLC and service residential loans with an aggregate unpaid principal balance of approximately $89 billion; American Home has been working to both board the Option One loan files and integrate the two servicing operations during the past few months. Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) — formerly known as part of Fidelity National Information Systems (FIS) until is was spun off earlier this year — said Thursday afternoon that American Home had signed a multiyear contract to service its loans on the ubiquitous Mortgage Servicing Package plaftorm, and to use LPS Desktop for workflow management across all mortgage-related activities. For those not versed in industry history, MSP refers to the former ALLTEL servicing platform that was bought by FIS in a 2005 deal worth a little over $1 billion; the MSP platform is used by half of the mortgage servicing market, and a core piece of the LPS technology portfolio. AHMSI has converted its existing 175,000 loans over to MSP; the 300,000 loans tied to the Option One platform were already serviced using the MSP platform, the company said in a press statement. “We more than doubled our portfolio with a recent acquisition and intend to continue to grow,” said David M. Friedman, president and chief executive officer of AHMSI. “The depth and breadth of MSP, combined with the flexibility and automation of LPS Desktop, make LPS the ideal partner for servicing our growing portfolio.” AHMSI now uses MSP in all areas of its mortgage servicing, including loan setup and maintenance, cashiering, escrow administration, investor accounting, default management and regulatory reporting. The LPS Desktop solution provides an integrated process management, imaging, and invoice and expense management solution, the company said. For more information, visit www.lpsvcs.com. Disclosure: The author held no positions in LPS or FIS when this story was published; indirect holdings may exist via mutual fund investments. HW reporters and writers follow a strict disclosure policy, the first in the mortgage trade.