Chase bank hiring 200 in Milwaukee - The Business Journal of Milwaukee:

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New employees are working at the Chase 111 E. Wisconsin Ave., and are focused mainly on negotiatintg new payment arrangements with homeownerw delinquent ontheir payments, said spokeswoman Christin Holevas. Chase is one of the nation’s largesty mortgage servicers with a portfoliioof $1.5 trillion. The bank added billion in mortgage business with the September 2008 acquisition ofWashington Mutual. The new hires include loan specialists, negotiators, underwriters and Holevas said. Many already have started Chase hasabout 1,400 employees in greater Milwaukee, and nearly 950 in Milwaukee, Holevaz said. Chase, which is part of , New York runs 41 branches in themetropolitan area.
In Decemberr 2008, Chase cited declining activityin home-equityy lending when it announced job eliminations by early February in its downtown Milwaukee home equity servicin g center. Some employees who were laid off earlie this year are likely amonfg those being hired for the mortgageserviciny functions, Holevas said. “Wde had terrific people and we want to get the best ofthoses back,” she said. Chase bank officials like the qualit y of employees in Milwaukee and theitrwork ethic, Holevas said. She could not predictr the longevity of thenew jobs. “Aas the business changes so do our employment needs,” Holevas said. “We staffg according to customers’ needs.
” As the number of foreclosuresd continues torise nationally, Chase is far from the only bank to boosft its staff for handling troubled mortgages. Some banks, including M&u Marshall & Ilsley in have instituted foreclosure moratoriums as they attempt to modify mortgagews toreduce payments. M&I’s foreclosure moratorium is scheduler to expire onJune 30. In the past six months, M&Ik has increased by 50 percent its staf dedicated to assisting the increasintg number of homeowners facingfinancial stress, said Dick Becker, presidentf of the bank’s Wisconsin community bank unit. He declines to disclose the number of jobsthat M&Ij has added.
M&I works with homeowners before they reachn delinquency to avoid foreclosure and also seek solutions for homeowners already in Becker said. Minneapolis-based , which has the second-largest deposit market shared in metropolitan Milwaukee and service s more than 1 millionmortgages nationally, announcesd in March that it is constructinv a building in Owensboro, Ky., for its mortgage services The bank already employs 850 people in Owensboro and the new buildinvg will accommodate up to 300 new employees. At the community bank level, the loan modification strategies are implementerd on asmaller scale.
For , Wauwatosa, increased its collections staff from two to three plusa half-timre employee to tackle the increased workload, said president and CEO Doug Gordon. Collections employees review the home-owner’sz financial situation in an effort toavoic foreclosure, Gordon said. The employees discuss what the homeownerr can afford for payments and whether the mortgage is he said. The bank has successfully modified many mortgages and even stopped some foreclosurese while they werein process, he said. “We’cd much rather modify them work withthem — than foreclose,” Gordon “Nobody wins in that.
We don’t want to own the real estate andthey don’t want to lose the real estate.”