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| Home The National Financial Services Consortium, LLC is made up of women and minority owned businesses that are working in consort to serve the nation with the ability to provide contractual services and to participate in the acquisition of loan portfolios and assets. This Consortium is working to keep homeowners in their homes, and to preserve the value of the communities where the impact of foreclosures has been most severe. The Consortium plan serves to get bad loans off bank books, enabling renewed lending and increased investment.
UPDATE:FDIC Letter, June 10, 2011 Mr. Quintero: Dave McDermott forwarded your email to me because he recently was named as an Assistant Director in the Office of Complex Financial Institutions and the Special Programs Section in the Division of Resolutions and Receiverships will be assuming his previous responsibilities. As we are now in the process of transitioning Dave’s duties, he asked me to respond to your email. Attached is the letter that Mr. Nash, Deputy to the Chairman for External Affairs, sent to Ms. Janis Bowdler, Director, Wealth-Building Policy Project, National Council of La Raza in Washington, D.C. with regard to the subject of servicing loans held by Spanish speaking households. FDIC is committed to addressing the issues that you raised. With regard to the Structured Transaction bidder qualification process, potential bidders must provide information to support the ability of the proposed servicing company to service single-family loans held by non-English speaking homeowners through its call center operations and loss mitigation and loan modification procedures. In addition, compliance reviews are now reviewing the ability of banks which acquired loans under Loss Share agreements to similarly service loans held by the acquiring institution. If you have questions, please call me at 202-898-8547 or Phil Mangano, Manager, Special Programs, DRR at 202-898-3747. Thank you for following-up with your inquiry and I apologize about the delay in responding to your email. Ron Ronald Sommers, Manager FAMB Post Closing Special Programs 550 17th St., NW, F-7032 Washington, DC 20429 Tel. 202-898-8547; RSommers@FDIC.GOV FDIC LETTER to NCLR; OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN April 25, 2011 Ms. Janis Bowdier Director, Wealth-Building Policy Project National Council of La Raza 1126 18 1h Street, N.W., Suite 600 Washington, D.C. 20036 Dear Ms. Bowdier: Thank you for the letter identifying your concerns regarding unique loan servicing issues affecting Spanish speaking households. Chairman Bair asked that I respond on her behalf. We agree that communication is severely hampered when non-English speaking homeowners’ and loan servicer’s call centers are unable to communicate because of language barriers. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Division of Resolutions and Receiverships (DRR) is looking into this matter by reviewing potential servicing issues affecting non-English speaking homeowners seeking loan modification and identifying possible opportunities to better address any potential negative impact on borrowers. For example, we will review potential investors in our structured loan sale transactions during the bidder qualification process on how well their proposed servicers handle non-English speaking borrowers in their call centers and under their loss mitigation procedures. DRR also will look into industry best practices in this area with our current FDIC loan servicing contractors and review our internal monitoring procedures under loss share and structured transactions and our loan servicing oversight program. Thank you for bringing this important issue to our attention. Mr. Dave McDermott in DRR will be our point of contact for you and will keep you apprised of our progress. Mr. McDermott can be reached on (202) 898-8511. Your interest in this matter is appreciated. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me at (202) 898-6962. Sincerely, Paul Nash Deputy to the Chairman for External Affairs NEW BIDDER QUESTIONNAIRE: SECTION 2.3.5 "If the assets to be transferred to each Company include single-family residential mortgage loans or singlefamily residences, please provide information on the Servicer’s capabilities, experience and dedicated staffing in successfully dealing with non-English speaking borrowers and homeowners. The information should clearly address the Servicer’s call center operations, including technology and number of current multi-lingual staff, and its related loss mitigation procedures to mitigate potential servicing issues affecting non-English speaking homeowners." | | Background
In 2004, Congress held hearings on diversity in the financial services industry. The picture that emerged was one of an industry where, at senior levels, women and minorities were scarce. Following those hearings, and again at the request of the New America Alliance, Congress asked the General Accountability Office (GAO) to look into the situation and report back. The GAO’s report was completed in July of 2006. Aside from noting the dismal state of diversity in the financial services industry, it concluded that between 1992 and 2004, overall, there had been no significant improvement in diversity in the financial services industry. The New America Alliance and other minority and womens groups attended meetings held with the U.S. Treasury Department Staff, in October through December of 2008 and contracting guidelines were agreed to with Treasury for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act contracts. | | The Need... The widespread impact of foreclosures in minority communities has caused declining home values and the rolling deterioration of neighborhoods hit by foreclosures. National Financial Services Consortium, LLC 4 Embarcadero Center Suite 1436 San Francisco Ca, 94111 Phone: 415 766-3500 Tony Quintero Cell: 408 348-7718 | |
| Wall Street Journal, 7/14/2010 -- LOS ANGELES---A partnership between Tom Barrack's Colony Capital LLC and a minority-owned investment firm won the bidding for a $1.85 billion portfolio of distressed commercial real-estate loans auctioned off by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The deal, the second-largest bulk sale of commercial-property debt under a public-private partnership, is expected to be announced Wednesday by the FDIC. Under terms of the transaction, Los Angeles-based Colony and New York-based Cogsville Group LLC agreed to pay 59 cents on the dollar, or $445 million, for a 40% equity stake in the assets consisting of 1,660 commercial-property loans held by 22 now-defunct banks, including Community Bank of Nevada, First Bank of Beverly Hills and New Frontier Bank.
The FDIC retained the remaining 60% and offered seven-year, zero-interest financing to the Colony-Cogsville group, which reduces the venture's upfront cash input to $218 million.
This deal is the first public-private setup in which a minority-owned firm has taken a stake, albeit a small one, during this economic downturn. Cogsville, an African-American-owned firm, contributed $16 million to the $218 million investment, for a 7% stake in the portfolio.
"The FDIC is encouraging partnerships between large and small firms," said Don Cogsville, a former player on the U.S. national soccer team in 1988 who had worked as a lawyer and an investment banker before forming his own firm in 2007. "We see it as a major opportunity." Barclays Capital advised the FDIC on the auction.
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Over the past year, there have been complaints on Capitol Hill and among smaller financial firms, especially those owned by minorities and women, about the lack of minority-firm participation in various public-private investment programs.
"A lot of minority-owned firms have been angry because they haven't been included in a lot of deals," said William Michael Cunningham, an investment adviser who tracks minority-owned financial firms.
In response, the FDIC started its minority-and-women outreach program this year, conducting seminars to facilitate participation by firms in its asset sales, FDIC officials said. The move also comes as politicians are ratcheting up pressure on regulators and financial firms to boost minority firms' chances of participating in various asset-management and bank-rescue programs sponsored by the government. These programs are expected to generate millions of dollars in management fees and investment opportunities for private companies.
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"You have to qualify and have to have the management and experience to deal with distressed real estate," said Tim Kruse, manager of structured transactions at the FDIC. "You can't be retail investors."
Mr. Kruse said the agency encourages relatively small, minority-owned firms to join with bigger companies to bid for its structured-asset sales via public-private ventures. The FDIC also is tailoring some of its asset sales to specifically target small and minority investors. It has created a portfolio of $181 million of commercial-property debt held by various failed banks that is aimed for these investors. The bidding deadline for the portfolio is July 27.
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The public-private partnership structure is modeled on about 70 such deals pioneered by Resolution Trust Corp., a federal agency formed to clean up the savings-and-loan mess of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Rising property values in the mid- and late-1990s enabled the RTC to reduce taxpayer losses. These structured deals, however, carry additional risk for the FDIC and, by extension, taxpayers. Because the agency takes a big chunk of the equity and provides financing, it stands to lose more if the markets decline. | |
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