Ocwen's Loan Management Advice: Go Global for Labor Advantage.(Brief Article)

The nation's most successful servicers will leverage technology to unleash a global workforce, or else they will be left behind. So says William C. Erbey, chairman and CEO of Ocwen Financial Corp. here, a major subprime servicer.

The company, which recently was lauded again by Standard & Poor's for its superior record as a servicer, has spent millions to build out infrastructure that is allowing it to capitalize on IT talent and low-cost labor in India. But India, the company says, is just the beginning.

"It is critical to differentiate between taking your software to another country and taking software that is real-time and global and taking those resources to benefit your work in the United States," Mr. Erbey said.

To do that, Ocwen has developed its RealServicing system that uses Internet protocol technology to send packets of information across a virtual private network in real time. The technology allows Ocwen to put servicing personnel online in India to service the U.S. market, at a much lower cost than American labor.

Beyond that, the system makes it possible for the servicer to "follow the sun," working files longer than those companies limited to a U.S. workforce.

The key to making the system work, according to Mr. Erbey, lies in making changes to a servicer's database instantly.

"The most important thing is to be in real time, not batch processing," he says. "It's impossible to run a global servicing system using a batch system because you can't follow the sun. If you shrink that nightly updating window, you enhance scalability."