Fidelity May Scrap Spinoff.(Fidelity National Financial )

Title insurance giant Fidelity National Financial has delayed - and may even scrap - the spin-off of its mortgage technology unit which includes its "service" bureau unit.

As Mortgage Servicing News went to press this month, FNF management blamed the delayed spin-off/initial public offering on a "relatively weak and unpredictable" equities market.

It also cited its just-announced $400 million acquisition of a bank technology firm, Intercept, as a reason for the delay. FNF said it wants to successfully integrate Intercept into the company before retrying the IPO. (Intercept is FNF's eighth acquisition in the financial services technology space in the past 18 months.) The title company said it will not bring the IPO to market until the first quarter of 2005 at the earliest but warned it may not "ultimately consummate" the spin-off.

Meanwhile, a source familiar with the company told Mortgage Servicing News that a top 20 residential servicer that uses the unit - Fidelity National Information Services - as its mortgage service bureau is contemplating switching systems and using Fiserv.

The servicer is believed to be HSBC Mortgage, Depew, N.Y. An HSBC spokeswoman said, "As a matter of policy we don't comment on our vendors." A Fiserv spokeswoman said she could neither confirm nor deny that it is getting HSBC as a client.

A source said the change over from Fidelity to Fiserv could occur in November. An official at FNIS in Jacksonville said he did not know anything about HSBC's plans, but referred inquiries to a New York account manager who did not return two telephone calls, one made to his cell phone.

Household International, HSBC's subprime unit, already uses Fiserv.