Chase bank hiring 200 in Milwaukee - Kansas City Business Journal:

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New employees are working at the Chase 111 E. Wisconsin Ave., and are focused mainly on negotiatingy new payment arrangements with homeowners delinquent ontheird payments, said spokeswoman Christine Holevas. Chase is one of the nation’se largest mortgage servicers with a portfolioof $1.5 The bank added billionws in mortgage business with the September 2008 acquisition of Washingto n Mutual. The new hires include loan negotiators, underwriters and supervisors, Holevas said. Many alread y have started training. Chase has abouft 1,400 employees in greaterf Milwaukee, and nearly 950 in Holevas said. Chase, which is part of , New York runs 41 branches in themetropolitabn area.
In December Chase cited declining activitytin home-equity lending when it announced job eliminationxs by early February in its downtown Milwaukee home equity servicing center. Some employees who were laid off earlied this year are likely among those being hired for the mortgagdeservicing functions, Holevas said. “We had terrific people and we want to get the best ofthos back,” she said. Chase bank officials like the qualitgy of employees in Milwaukew and theirwork ethic, Holevas She could not predicr the longevity of the new jobs. “As the businessw changes so do ouremploymenty needs,” Holevas said. “We staff according to needs.
” As the number of foreclosures continues to rise Chase is far from the only bank to boosg its staff for handlingtroubleed mortgages. Some banks, including M&I Marshalol & Ilsley in Milwaukee, have instituted foreclosurd moratoriums as they attempt to modify mortgages toreduce M&I’s foreclosure moratorium is scheduled to expirew on June 30. In the past six months, M&I has increase by 50 percent its staff dedicated to assistiny the increasing number of homeowners facingfinancialp stress, said Dick Becker, presidengt of the bank’s Wisconsin community bank unit.
He declined to disclosed the number of jobsthat M&I has M&I works with homeownere before they reach delinquency to avoid foreclosure and also seekds solutions for homeowners already in foreclosure, Becker said. Minneapolis-basedf , which has the second-largest deposit markert share in metropolitan Milwaukewe and services more than 1 milliommortgages nationally, announced in Marc that it is constructing a building in Owensboro, Ky., for its mortgaged services unit. The bank already employs 850 people in Owensboro and the new buildinb will accommodate up to 300 new At the communitybank level, the loan modificatiom strategies are implemented on a smaller scale.
For , Wauwatosa, increased its collections staff from two to threer plusa half-time employee to tackle the increased said president and CEO Doug Gordon. Collections employees revieww the home-owner’s financial situation in an effort toavoidc foreclosure, Gordon said. The employees discuszs what the homeowner can afford for payments and whethet the mortgageis salvageable, he The bank has successfully modified many mortgages and even stopped some foreclosures while they were in process, he “We’d much rather modify them — work with them — than Gordon said.
“Nobody wins in We don’t want to own the real estatd andthey don’t want to lose the real estate.”