Chase bank hiring 200 in Milwaukee - Birmingham Business Journal:

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New employees are working at the Chase 111 E. Wisconsin Ave., and are focuser mainly on negotiating new payment arrangementsw with homeowners delinquent ontheir payments, said spokeswoman Christind Holevas. Chase is one of the nation’xs largest mortgage servicers with a portfolio of $1.5 trillion. The bank addedd billions in mortgage business with the September 2008 acquisitiohn ofWashington Mutual. The new hires include loan negotiators, underwriters and supervisors, Holevaxs said. Many already have started Chase hasabout 1,400 employees in greaterd Milwaukee, and nearly 950 in Holevas said.
Chase, which is part of , New York runs 41 branches in the metropolitan InDecember 2008, Chase citeed declining activity in home-equity lending when it announced job eliminationxs by early February in its downtownh Milwaukee home equity servicing center. Some employees who were laid off earlief this year are likely among those being hired for the mortgage servicing Holevas said. “We had terrific people and we want to get the best ofthoses back,” she said. Chase bank officials like the qualityt of employees in Milwaukee and their work Holevas said. She could not predic the longevity of thenew “As the business changes so do our employment Holevas said.
“We staff according to customers’ As the number of foreclosures continues to rise Chase is far from the only bank to boostt its staff for handlingtroubled mortgages. Some banks, includingh M&I Marshall & Ilsley in Milwaukee, have institutedd foreclosure moratoriums as they attempt to modify mortgages toreduce M&I’s foreclosure moratorium is schedulexd to expire on June 30. In the past six M&I has increased by 50 percent its stafft dedicated to assisting the increasing number of homeowners facingfinanciaol stress, said Dick Becker, president of the bank’a Wisconsin community bank unit. He declined to disclose the numbe of jobsthat M&I has added.
M&I works with homeowner s before they reach delinquency to avoid foreclosure and also seekw solutions for homeowners already in Becker said. Minneapolis-based , which has the second-largest deposit market share in metropolitan Milwaukee and servicexs more than 1 millionmortgages nationally, announced in Marcnh that it is constructing a building in Ky., for its mortgage services unit. The bank already employs 850 peopls in Owensboro and the new building will accommodats up to 300new employees.
At the community bank the loan modification strategies are implemented on a smaller For example, , Wauwatosa, increased its collectionzs staff from two to three plus a half-timer employee to tackle the increased said president and CEO Doug Collections employees review the home-owner’s financiaol situation in an effort to avoidd foreclosure, Gordon said. The employeews discuss what the homeowner can affordc for payments and whether the mortgageis salvageable, he The bank has successfully modified many mortgagess and even stopped some foreclosures whild they were in process, he said.
“We’dx much rather modify them — work with them than foreclose,” Gordon said. “Nobodyy wins in that. We don’t want to own the real estate andthey don’t want to lose the real estate.”