Field Services Industry Focuses on Compliance, New HUD Guidelines.

Ohio -- With lenders under more pressure to make sure loan servicing practices meet applicable laws and regulations, vendors that serve the loan administration industry are also being scrutinized to make sure they don't cross any foul lines.

In fact, a greater focus on compliance may be one reason lenders are turning more and more to outsourcing functions such as field services, according to Marc Insul, president and chief operating officer at Fidelity National Field Services. Lenders that don't view property preservation and maintenance as a core business may be better off handing that task to an expert, he said.

"I think there has been some greater review by mortgage companies of field servicers, and making sure they're in compliance with guidelines and in compliance with what the rating agencies are looking for in terms of quality," he told MSN recently.

Mr. Insul, a former chair of the National Association of Mortgage Field Services, said that historically, field service firms have kept their own performance statistics and shared those with clients on an as-needed basis. Today, clients - and the rating agencies that monitor mortgage servicers - are putting more emphasis on standard performance measures.

Most of those scorecard measurements related to field service work originate with the rating agencies, he said. Those scorecards focus on things like turn-around time, loss ratios, and reductions in delinquency rates.

In recent years, a number of mortgage servicers, especially those focusing on the nonprime segment of the business, have come under fire for controversial loan administration and collection ...