Kroll Bond Rating Agency announced Monday that it is assigning a “B+” rating to Ocwen Financial based on the company’s “market leading” position as a subprime mortgage servicer.
According to Kroll’s note, Ocwen is engaged in a “variety of businesses related to residential and commercial mortgage servicing, including acquiring, servicing and originating single and multi-family residential and commercial real estate loans. “
Kroll notes that as of Sept. 30, 2015, Ocwen had a mortgage servicing portfolio of 1.8 million loans aggregating approximately $288.1 billion in gross unpaid principal balance.
According to Kroll’s note, the “B+” rating for Ocwen is also reflective of Ocwen’s “improved governance and risk management standards, adequate access to equity and debt markets and appropriate leverage metrics.”
Ocwen’s improved performance has also been noted in recent reports from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
In a recent update about the CFPB’s consumer complaint database, the CFPB noted that complaints about Ocwen had fallen, making it the only company in the top ten most-complained-about companies that saw its complaints drop over the same time period last year, from July-September 2014 to July-September 2015.
Ocwen has long been the target of regulators and consumers due to its mortgage servicing practices, but the company has improved recently, due in part to massive settlements with the New York Department of Financial Services, among other financial regulators.
While Ocwen has seen some improvement, Kroll notes that the company’s “positive elements” are counterbalanced by “constrained financial performance stemming from a decline in unpaid principal balance, increased regulatory framework, and weak interest rate coverage.”
