Midland Says New Platform Tested.(Midland Loan Servicing)

Midland Loan Servicing says it has completed the testing of its Enterprise loan servicing platform and will begin marketing it in earnest to other commercial mortgage loan servicers next year. Stacy Berger, Midland's senior vice president, told Mortgage Servicing News, "We're ready to declare victory."

The company started down the path that would lead to developing its own platform about five years ago, in order to "control its own destiny by controlling the technology," the company said. Today, the Enterprise system is being used by three major companies and Midland, servicing about 3,000 loans worth over $20 billion.

Principal, Mutual of Omaha and I-Star Financial (formerly Starwood Financial) are currently using the platform.

By mid-2003 Midland plans to convert the remainder of its loan servicing portfolio from McCracken Financials platform over to Enterprise. That will add another $63 million worth of loans, said Mr. Berger.

"What we're doing now is the CMBS Master Servicing piece," he said. "We're making all of the money moves - reconciliation and reporting - work on a very large scale. We're finishing up the testing of those things now."

Once that testing is complete, Midland will move its portfolio over and then send out a staff of marketing people to let other servicers know it's available.

"Our vision was to use technology to create more efficiency in the commercial mortgage servicing market where there are thousands of smaller shops servicing a couple hundred loans."