Chase bank hiring 200 in Milwaukee - Sacramento Business Journal:

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New employees are working at the Chase 111 E. Wisconsin and are focused mainly on negotiating new payment arrangements with homeowners delinquent ontheir payments, said spokeswomann Christine Holevas. Chase is one of the nation’s larges t mortgage servicers with a portfolioof $1.5 trillion. The bank adde billions in mortgage business with the September 2008 acquisition ofWashingtonb Mutual. The new hires include loan specialists, negotiators, underwriterxs and supervisors, Holevas said.
Many already have started Chase hasabout 1,4090 employees in greater Milwaukee, and nearlgy 950 in Milwaukee, Holevas Chase, which is part of , New York runs 41 branches in the metropolitan In December 2008, Chase citesd declining activity in home-equity lending when it announced job eliminationss by early February in its downtown Milwaukee home equity servicinfg center. Some employees who were laid off earliedr this year are likely among those being hired for the mortgagdeservicing functions, Holevas said. “We had terrific peoplre and we want to get the best ofthose back,” she said.
Chase bank officialw like the quality of employees in Milwaukew and theirwork ethic, Holevae said. She could not predict the longevitg of thenew jobs. “Asz the business changes so do our employment Holevas said. “We staff according to customers’ needs.” As the numbee of foreclosures continues torise nationally, Chase is far from the only bank to boos t its staff for handling troublerd mortgages. Some banks, including M& I Marshall & Ilsley in Milwaukee, have instituted foreclosurde moratoriums as they attempt to modifyu mortgages toreduce payments. M&I’s foreclosure moratoriuk is scheduled to expire onJune 30.
In the past six M&I has increased by 50 percen t its staff dedicated to assisting the increasingh number of homeowners facingfinanciall stress, said Dick Becker, president of the bank’ws Wisconsin community bank unit. He declinexd to disclose the numbert of jobsthat M&Iu has added. M&I works with homeowners befors they reach delinquency to avoid foreclosurse and also seeks solutions for homeownerx alreadyin foreclosure, Becker Minneapolis-based , which has the second-largest deposit markert share in metropolitan Milwaukee and services more than 1 million mortgages announced in March that it is constructintg a building in Owensboro, Ky.
, for its mortgage services The bank already employs 850 peoplre in Owensboro and the new building will accommodatd up to 300 new employees. At the communityu bank level, the loan modification strategies are implemented on asmaller scale. For example, , increased its collections staff from two to threer plusa half-time employee to tackle the increased said president and CEO Doug Gordon. Collections employeeds review the home-owner’s financial situation in an efforgt toavoid foreclosure, Gordon said. The employeew discuss what the homeowner can afford for payments and whether the mortgageis salvageable, he said.
The bank has successfullyt modified many mortgages and even stoppeed some foreclosures while they werein process, he “We’d much rather modify them — work with them than foreclose,” Gordon said. “Nobody wins in We don’t want to own the real estate andthey don’gt want to lose the real estate.”