Meriden, CT, January 4, 2018—Planet Home Lending’s servicing operation has been awarded two “Outlook Stable” ratings from FitchRatings:
- S. residential primary servicing rating for Subprime product at ‘RPS3.”
- S. residential special servicer rating at ‘RSS3.”
“Fitch’s diligence and requirements are rigorous and comprehensive, so to earn the ratings is a milestone event for our growing company,” said Planet Home Lending CEO Michael Dubeck.
Planet Home Lending had been a mortgage servicer since 2007 and currently services a $12.5 billion portfolio of GSE and Ginnie Mae mortgage servicing rights. It expanded into the special servicing space for private clients in September 2016 with the addition of a dedicated asset management team in Rochester, NY. Since then, the firm has been adding private clients looking for an experienced NPL/RPL servicer.
“Planet Home Lending offered the perfect platform to expand into special servicing,” said James DePalma, executive vice president of Planet Home Lending. “Our special servicing team at Planet Home Lending has decades of experience in creating a seamless integration into NPL/RPL investment operations,” DePalma said.
The firm’s Wall Street roots led it to create a single-point-of-contact asset management platform and corresponding reporting suite that easily integrate into trading desk systems and operations, which appeals to RPL/NPL investors.
“Investors need a special servicer that can coordinate and customize its activities to respond to clients’ investment objectives. That’s exactly what Planet Home Lending does,” DePalma says.
Planet Home Lending has also made strides into the subservicing market, having earned the desirable Ginnie Mae subservicer approval.
Planet Home Lending has an affinity for small- and mid-size issuers. “Currently, the market is dominated by a small number of large subservicers who concentrate their resources on their largest clients,” DePalma said. “We’re large enough to be price competitive, small enough that each account matters, and we don’t have a minimum loan count or charge monthly minimum fees.”