JPMorgan Completes Purchase of $45B in Ocwen Servicing Rights

JPMorgan Chase has purchased $45 billion in servicing rights from the embattled mortgage firm Ocwen Financial.

Ocwen had announced the planned sale in March but withheld the name of the buyer; news reports had said JPMorgan was the purchaser. JPMorgan bought the rights to 266,000 "high-quality Fannie Mae loans," JPMorgan said in a news release Thursday.

"Buying this prime servicing book will improve the quality of our servicing portfolio and will help drive a stronger and less volatile mortgage business," Kevin Watters, JPMorgan's chief executive of mortgage banking, said in the release. "We expect the portfolio, in addition to lower delinquency rates overall, will help improve the value of our business."

The portfolio will begin changing hands June 1, the release said. 

Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Finance Agency approved the deal, a spokesman for Ocwen said in an email Thursday. The sale "furthers Ocwen's corporate strategy of reducing the size of the company's agency servicing portfolio," the email said.

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