At five offices around the U.S., hundreds of Bank of America Corp. employees are slogging through 102,000 foreclosure files related to Countrywide loans, trying to fix any problems.
Cleaning up the mess is a huge challenge for the Charlotte, N.C., bank, a modest player in the mortgage-servicing industry before the 2008 acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp. The takeover, encouraged by the Treasury Department, ballooned the size of the combined company’s servicing unit to 14 million loans from four million.
More than 85 percent of the bank’s 1.3 million mortgage customers now at least 60 days behind on their payments got their loans through Countrywide. The $4 billion deal also saddled Bank of America with technology problems, paperwork glitches and cultural tension.
•CLICK HERE to read the Wall Street Journal story.
