JPMorgan Chase &Â Co. has been reducing its mortgage servicing staffing as the need for such positions has diminished. But some Florida servicing jobs won’t suffer the same fate as a result of a deal to sell the unit to a growing special servicer.
Last month, Chase disclosed that it is laying off 300 employees in South Carolina, eliminating 529 jobs in New York and cutting 121 positions in Texas.
The staff reduction followed an agreement Chase reached with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve that resolved foreclosure review requirements of April 2011 consent orders.
More than 400 Chase employees at a mortgage servicing operation in Melbourne, Fla., also won’t be working for the New York-based banking giant any longer.
Instead, they are being offered positions at Wingspan Portfolio Advisors, an announcement Tuesday said.
The Dallas-based company reached an agreement with Chase to acquire the Melbourne operation. The transaction calls for Wingspan to acquire the office lease.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Wingspan, a Mortgage Daily advertiser, says it is a component and special mortgage servicer. It was recognized in the Hire Power Awards from Inc., which ranked small and mid-sized private businesses by the number of new jobs they generated from 2008 to 2011,
Headcount at Wingspan, which recently added originations to its operations, grew from 39 employees in October 2009 to 1,700 by March 2012.
With the Chase deal, staffing now stands at nearly 2,000 people.
Overseeing the new business is Wingspan Executive Vice President, Servicing Operations Jason Spooner.
“This is big news for us and we see it as indicative of where our industry is headed,” Wingspan Chief Executive Officer and President Steven Horne said in the statement. “We are now fully equipped to meet the needs of clients as they downsize the scale of their default servicing operations.”
Chase is among the clients to be serviced by the Melbourne operation.
