NetBank Puts Servicing Shop Up for Sale

Atlanta-based NetBank has announced plans to sell its mortgage servicing platform along with most of its mortgage servicing rights on $13 billion of home loans.NetBank said management believes the proposed sale will free up $20 million to $35 million in risk-based capital that the company has allocated to its servicing asset. "When we committed to this line of business as part of our overall income diversification strategy for the company, we set a goal of growing the servicing asset to at least the $25 billion mark," said Douglas Freeman, NetBank's chairman and chief executive officer. "Based on our analysis, we needed to reach this minimum level to rationalize our investment and to have the asset serve as an effective macro hedge against our mortgage production network." He added that economic and market changes have made it difficult for NetBank to increase the servicing asset as much as the company had hoped. NetBank can be found online at http://www.netbank.com.