PHH will cut one-third of its local workforce in Amherst, New York, where it currently employs 294 people, according to an article in Buffalo Business First by Allissa Kline.
The article explained that PHH is “evaluating (its) long-term need” to maintain a local presence."
From the article:
Details about the company’s facilities plan and the future of its workforce in Western New York remain unknown. The New Jersey-headquartered company entered the market in 2013 when it began handling mortgage processing operations for HSBC Bank USA N.A.
PHH plans to eliminate 91 jobs on Dec. 31 or within 14 days of the new year.
The article added that the cuts stem from a reduction in certain mortgage servicing business for HSBC and a shift in origination work from Amherst to Florida.
At the end of August, PHH announced that it recently received notice from HSBC Bank that it plans to sell the mortgage servicing rights on approximately 139,000 mortgage loans currently subserviced by PHH Mortgage Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of PHH, on behalf of HSBC.
In an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, PHH said that HSBC informed the company that the purchaser of the mortgage servicing rights does not plan to continue using PHH as a subservicer.
In April, Bank of America informed PHH that it intended to pull the servicing on mortgages originated for Merrill Lynch clients away from PHH and take it in house.
That decision came just a few months after Bank of America and PHH agreed to continue an arrangement which had PHH subservicing mortgages for Merrill Lynch clients.