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In the latest move in what’s shaping up to be a transformational year for the company, loan servicing technology provider Sagent has appointed Jaime Gow as chief financial officer.
Gow — formerly a top executive at Sagent’s biggest client, Mr. Cooper — will help Sagent customers and prospects make the most of the company’s new Dara mortgage servicing platform.
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Launched in February, Sagent touts Dara as the first platform capable of handling every phase of loan servicing, with the potential to lower operational costs by up to 40 percent.
Jaime Gow
“Sagent’s new Dara platform can lower servicer operational costs across all mortgage servicing areas” including boarding, cash processing, escrows, call center, loss mitigation, and claims, Gow said in a statement. “A big part of my job is to help our customers and prospects find and maximize these efficiencies in their own operations.”
Sagent acquired the rights to Mr. Cooper’s loan servicing platform in 2022 in a $250 million deal that gave Mr. Cooper a minority stake in Sagent and two seats on its board of directors.
Since then, Sagent has been engaged in what the company describes as “a multi-year strategic plan to build the future of mortgage servicing” by moving the company’s platforms to the cloud, building long-term relationships with top mortgage servicers, and launching the new Dara platform.
Last year Sagent hired Fannie Mae veteran Marianne Sullivan as chief operating officer and appointed former Wells Fargo executive Perry Hilzendeger as executive vice president of servicing.
To support its partnership with Mr. Cooper, in May 2023 Sagent announced the opening of an 18,367 square-foot facility employing more than 120 workers in Chennai, India.
Sagent appointed Mr. Cooper’s vice chairman, Chris Marshall — who along with Mr. Cooper CEO Jay Bray took a seat on Sagent’s board in 2022 — as its executive chairman in January.
Geno Paluso
The changing of the guard at Sagent culminated in February with the appointment of former Navy SEAL and BAE Systems executive Geno Paluso to succeed Dan Sogorka as chief executive officer.
Paluso — who after retiring as a captain from the U.S. Navy in 2014 served as commandant of cadets at The Citadel military college and as vice president of business development for aerospace and technology company BAE Systems — was tasked with completing, launching and operationalizing Sagent’s Dara platform.
Paluso “brings a track record of strong operational discipline to Sagent as it enters its next phase in delivering the future of mortgage servicing,” Frank Bisignano, CEO of Sagent stakeholder Fiserv, said in a statement at the time.
Signing and re-upping clients
Mr. Cooper, which collects payments on more than $1 trillion in mortgages, is Sagent’s biggest client. But Sagent says its platforms are used by clients to service more than $2 trillion in outstanding mortgage balances, who use the company’s configurable solutions to “engage borrowers and earn customer loyalty, lower servicing costs, ensure compliance, and increase the value of servicing rights throughout full market cycles.”
While some lenders sell the mortgage servicing rights to the loans they originate to companies like Mr. Cooper, others see handling the servicing on their own loans as a chance to get the first shot at refinancing borrowers when mortgage rates come down.
In March, Sagent announced a new seven-year partnership with independent mortgage bank CMG Financial. After acquiring the retail division of Homebridge Financial Services in 2023, CMG decided to bring loan servicing in house and tapped Sagent to help it realized its goal of achieving “industry-best customer retention.”
The deal was a big win for Sagent. Together, CMG and Homebridge originated $31 billion in mortgages in 2022. Today, San Ramon, California-based CMG sponsors 1,905 mortgage loan officers working out of 406 branch offices nationwide, according to records maintained by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry.
“Mortgage servicing is where lifetime customer relationships are managed and grown,” Paluso said at the time. “Sagent can’t wait to help CMG build better relationships with today’s homeowners and buyers.”
Other clients Sagent has signed or re-upped to multi-year deals include American Savings Bank, BSI Financial, Central Bank, Click n’Close, Digital Federal Credit Union and Synovus Bank.
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