The Truth Revealed – Who is servicing the FFML deals?
“The laws and rules that govern the securities industry in the United States derive from a simple and straightforward concept: all investors, whether large institutions or private individuals, should have access to certain basic facts about an investment prior to buying it, and so long as they hold it.”
Source: http://www.sec.gov/about/whatwedo.shtml
With regard to servicers, our industry fails to uphold this simple and straightforward concept. It is a puzzle to determine precisely who the current primary servicer(s) (and especially the sub or special servicers) are. To solve this puzzle, you must collect various pieces of data over time from various sources and then analyze it to come up with a solution. Sometimes you have to look at changes in performance statistics to help guide you. As a trustee, BNY Mellon does not make the name of the servicer available and Deutsche Bank generally does not seem to keep the servicer name updated. Wells Fargo and US Bank do a decent job, but fail to distinguish the primary from the master servicer. Bloomberg should never be trusted for the current primary servicer.
As an example, we took the 77 deals off the FFML shelf and did a deep dive analysis. This a great example to use as there were various original servicers and multiple transfers to various servicers. We found it one of the most confusing shelves to follow. Our data sources include:
Published announcements from the rating agencies and trustees
Loan level data provided by the master servicers, securities administrators, and servicers
Remittance statements
Review of foreclosure filings online for hints (i.e. Lucent Blvd Littleton, CO is SLS, West Temple Salt Lake City, UT is SPS)
We cannot guarantee that our results are perfect, but we doubt anyone else has gone through this much trouble at discovering the truth. Our updated deal and deal-group servicer mappings across all deals are available only to our clients. If you would like to receive a copy, please just send us an email.
Contact us at 203-276-0672 to become a client and access all reports and attachments.
