Ocwen hands pink slips to 244 in Fort Washington

Ocwen Financial Corp., which won a $3 billion auction in bankruptcy court for Residential Capital L.L.C.'s loan-servicing unit, handed out pink slips Tuesday to nearly half its workforce in Fort Washington and laid off employees in 10 other locations.

Ocwen notified 244 in Fort Washington, who work mostly in residential mortgage servicing, that their jobs will be eliminated, beginning in the first quarter and continuing through next July.

An additional 307 people will continue to work in Fort Washington in mortgage servicing, information technology, and administrative positions, Ocwen spokesman Rick Gillespie said.

Across the country, Ocwen notified 844 people that they are losing their jobs, including 237 in Dallas and 238 in Waterloo, Iowa. Smaller numbers were laid off in eight other locations.

Fifty workers in a lending office in Mount Laurel will not be affected, Gillespie said. "There is no impact in Mount Laurel," he said.

A U.S. Bankruptcy Court last year approved a joint $3 billion buyout bid from Ocwen Loan Servicing and Walter Investment Management for Residential Capital (ResCap), a big subprime mortgage lender based in New York.

The court also approved the sale of ResCap's portfolio of about 50,000 loans to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for $1.5 billion. ResCap, formerly the mortgage arm of Ally Financial Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection in May 2012 after being hobbled by payments on debt taken out to finance home mortgages that soured.

"Throughout 2013 we have been combining multiple mortgage-servicing portfolios as the result of recent acquisitions," Gillespie said.

"We focused on trying to provide the best service for both customers and the investors. We integrated much of the servicing portfolios onto a common technology platform," Gillespie said. "Much of that integration work is done."

Because of the consolidation and "some redundancy of functions, we've done the review and projected current long-term staffing needs and we made the decision to reduce staffing levels," Gillespie said.

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