Fiserv Inc. has called off talks to provide mortgage servicing to JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Fidelity National Information Services Inc. seems poised to chase after the work.
In November, Fiserv said its MortgageServ was negotiating with JPMorgan Chase to take over the New York banking company’s servicing work. However, Fiserv said Tuesday that the two companies could not settle on terms.
“While we are disappointed that this transaction has not come to fruition, JPMorgan Chase is an important client for Fiserv,” Jeffery W. Yabuki, Fiserv’s president and chief executive, said Tuesday during the Brookfield, Wis., company’s second-quarter earnings conference call. “We have multiple relationships and will continue to work together in the future.”
During Fidelity National’s second-quarter earnings call Wednesday, analysts asked executives from the Jacksonville, Fla., company whether they were interested in pursuing the servicing work.
Lee Kennedy, its president and CEO, said he could not comment on a possible JPMorgan Chase deal, but he hinted that he wanted to pursue one. “We’re interested in picking up business wherever we can pick it up,” he said.
Fidelity National is the nation’s leading mortgage servicer, handling about half of all U.S. mortgages. Its 80 mortgage-servicing clients include Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., and Washington Mutual Inc.
John Kraft, an analyst with D.A. Davidson & Co. in Great Falls, Mont., said the negotiations with JPMorgan Chase were “pretty promising” for Fiserv, but he noted that the initial announcement said the companies were in negotiations, not that a deal had been reached.
“It’s pretty rare when a company will issue a press release saying, ‘We’re in talks,’ ” he said.
