Chase Wholesale Closing 4 Regional Centers

Chase Wholesale Lending is closing four of its eight regional operations centers, the company says in a memorandum sent to its mortgage brokers. The four centers that are closing are in Garden City, N.Y.; Westmont, Ill.; Tampa, Fla.; and San Ramon, Calif. The centers that will remain open are in Dallas; Charlotte, N.C.; Cleveland; and Orange, Calif. There will be a net loss of 175 jobs, a Chase spokesman said. (The unit currently employs 600 people.) The memo was sent out under the signatures of Rod Brace and Saber Salam, wholesale lending business executives. The company said it plans to expand staffing at these sites to absorb processing from the closing centers. "As anticipated, the national implementation of ChaseLoanCenter has created production efficiencies throughout our organization," the memo said. "We expect to take advantage of scale and become more efficient by operating fewer, but larger centers." ChaseLoanCenter is a loan origination system the company launched this summer. Chase ranked first among all wholesale lenders in the second quarter, table-funding $9.6 billion through loan brokers, a 40% decline from the level of a year earlier, according to National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report. In the first quarter, Chase table-funded $11.4 billion in home mortgages. It ranked first in that quarter as well.