Ocwen Financial Corporation is a provider of residential and commercial mortgage loan servicing, special servicing, and asset management services, which has been described as "debt collectors, collecting monthly principal and interest from homeowners". Ocwen was founded in 1988 by William Erbey and is headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida, with additional offices in Mount Laurel, NJ, Rancho Cordova, California, and St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. It also has support operations in the Philippines and India. Ocwen's Slogan is "Helping Homeowners Is What We Do."
Corporate affairs
Ocwen is licensed to service mortgage loans in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and two U.S. territories. Ocwen has been servicing residential mortgage loans since 1988 and subprime mortgage loans since 1994.
As of 2010, Ocwen's subprime servicing volume was $56 billion, ranking it fourth in subprime servicing behind American Home Servicing ($78 billion), Bank of America/Countrywide ($82 billion), and Chase Home Finance ($90 billion). As of December 31, 2011, Ocwen had serviced 671,623 residential loans with an aggregate unpaid principal balance (UPB) of $102.2 billion. As of February 26, 2014, with rights to service a mortgage portfolio of over $500 billion in UPB, it is the biggest non-bank servicer of U.S. mortgages.
Acquisitions
In June 2013, Ocwen Financial (OCN), the nation's fourth-largest mortgage servicer, bought the rights to service $78 billion in mortgages from OneWest Bank, the former IndyMac Bancorp.
In September 2010, Ocwen, through Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC (OLS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Ocwen, acquired the U.S. non-prime mortgage servicing business of Barclays Bank PLC, known as HomEq servicing. While the transaction did not result in the transfer of ownership of any legal entities, OLS acquired the mortgage servicing rights (MSRs) and associated servicer advances of the business as well as the servicing platforms based in Sacramento, California, and Raleigh, North Carolina, for an initial aggregate purchase price of $1.2 billion. With the close of the HomEq acquisition, Ocwen boarded onto its servicing platform approximately 134,000 residential mortgage loans with an aggregate UPB of approximately $22.4 billion.
In September 2011, Ocwen completed its acquisition of outstanding partnership interests of Litton Loan Servicing LP and certain interest-only servicing securities previously owned by Goldman Sachs & Co. from Goldman Sachs. Following this $247.2 million worth acquisition, Ocwen became the largest subprime mortgage servicer in the U.S. The Litton acquisition increased Ocwen's servicing portfolio by 245,000 residential mortgage loans with an aggregate UPB of approximately $38.6 billion. Litton Loan Servicing signed a consent order over their loan servicing practices.
In April 2012, Ocwen closed on the purchase of approximately $22 billion of mortgage servicing rights from Saxon Mortgage Services, a unit of Morgan Stanley. Saxon Mortgage signed consent orders with federal regulators because of its mortgage loan servicing practices.
In June 2012, Ocwen completed its purchase of Aurora Bank's commercial servicing rights portfolio.
In October 2012, Ocwen announced plans to buy Homeward Residential Holdings, Inc. from WL Ross & Co. for $750 million. Homeward consisted of the mortgage servicing from American Home Mortgage and Option One Mortgage. The acquisition was finalized on December 27, 2012. As a result of the acquisition, the Jacksonville, Florida, site was closed, laying off all 370 employees, and 325 employees at Homeward's Coppell, Texas, location were laid off.
In October 2012, Ocwen also partnered with Walter Investment Management Corp. to place the winning $3 billion bid for Residential Capital's mortgage-servicing and origination assets at a bankruptcy auction. Additionally, the company entered into an agreement with Genworth Financial Corp. to acquire Genworth Financial Home Equity Access Inc. for $22 million.
In February 2012, Gleacher & Co. announced the sale of its mortgage unit ClearPoint to Ocwen.
In June 2013, Ocwen Financial Corp. (OCN), a provider of loan and asset-management services, agreed to buy contracts to handle payment collections on about $78 billion of mortgages from OneWest Bank FSB for $2.53 billion.
On February 27, 2018, Ocwen Financial Corporation entered into definitive agreement to acquire PHH Corporation for $360 million.