Director, Loan Servicing

Description

Summary

The Director of Loan Servicing is a senior departmental leadership role responsible for overseeing consumer, indirect, and residential mortgage servicing operations across the full post-funding loan lifecycle. This role provides strategic and hands-on leadership to ensure accuracy, regulatory compliance, operational excellence, and consistent, high-quality member experience. The Director leads servicing teams through subordinate leaders and serves as Sunward’s servicing authority with investors, auditors, examiners, and internal partners. While collections and foreclosure are managed separately, this role is accountable for the servicing data, notices, and handoffs that support those functions.

Key Responsibilities/Essential Functions

• Lead and develop the Loan Servicing function by setting clear performance expectations, coaching and developing staff, and building bench strength for current and future needs.
• Ensure trained backup coverage and documented procedures exist for all critical servicing functions, including investor reporting and remittance, custodial reconciliation, escrow analysis, loan boarding, payoffs, and wire releases, eliminating single points of failure.
• Translate lending strategy into annual Loan Servicing goals, plans, and priorities on a one-year horizon; direct execution and align progress with the Chief Lending Officer.
• Maintain accountability for all consumer, indirect, and mortgage servicing processes, including loan setup and boarding, payment processing and application, escrow administration and analysis, insurance and property tax monitoring, collateral and lien perfection, titling, lien and UCC releases, payoff processing, IRS reporting, and departmental reporting.
• Own servicing transfer governance for loans transferred in and out, including investor transfer approvals and lead times, boarding data integrity, required transfer notices, and address research and verification for returned notices.
• Ensure compliance with all secondary market and investor servicing requirements, including the FHLBank MPF program, Fannie Mae, and other applicable agencies and investors.
• Maintain servicer eligibility and annual recertification, including net worth and liquidity representations, fidelity bond, and errors and omissions coverage.
• Monitor repurchase, indemnification, make-whole, and recourse exposure and report it to senior leadership.
• Own the investor reporting and remittance calendar by remittance type; ensure loan-level reporting, edit and reject resolution, and remittances are accurate and within investor deadlines. Manage servicer scorecard and master servicer performance and hold compensatory fees at zero.
• Ensure principal and interest and tax and insurance custodial accounts are properly established and segregated, reconciled monthly within investor deadlines, and that reconciling items and unapplied or suspense funds are researched, aged, and resolved.
• Own the document custodian relationship, including collateral file custody, certification, and transfer, including the quality assurance plan, annual report and independent third-party review.
• Ensure compliance with all applicable federal and state servicing laws and regulations. Ensure policies, procedures, and internal control standards are documented, current, and consistently applied; monitor adherence, identify root causes of recurring issues, and escalate systemic risk to senior leadership.
• Direct implementation of regulatory, investor, and system changes, including pending Regulation X servicing changes and NCUA records preservation requirements, owning the change plan, procedure updates, system configuration, testing, and training.
• Own a written quality control program with defect rate targets by severity and function-level testing across payment processing, escrow, insurance, payoffs, credit reporting, and investor accounting; trend findings, drive remediation to closure, and report results to leadership.
• Own the servicing complaint and error resolution program, including notices of error and requests for information within required acknowledgment and response deadlines, consumer complaint portal responses, root cause analysis, trending, and reporting.
• Serve as point person for all internal, external, regulatory, and investor audits and examinations; own finding closure and aging.
• Own risk-based oversight of all servicing third parties and any subservicer, including insurance and tax tracking, flood determination, electronic lien and title, lockbox and payment processors, and credit furnishing agents: due diligence, SOC 1 and SOC 2 review, annual quality control testing, service level scorecards, right-to-audit and exit provisions, and counterparty screening. Maintain Credit Union-authored policies rather than relying on vendor documentation.
• Maintain dual control and segregation of duties over all funds movement, including custodial and escrow disbursements, payoff and refund wires, and adjustments; enforce verbal callback verification on any change to payoff or disbursement instructions. Maintain servicing business continuity and disaster recovery procedures with annual review and approval, third- and fourth-party contingency planning, and incident reporting within required timeframes.
• Manage the Loan Servicing budget and contribute to annual budget planning. Provide the cost-to-service and operational assumptions used in mortgage servicing rights valuation; partner with Accounting and Finance to review and challenge quarterly valuation inputs, support impairment testing, and inform servicing-retained versus servicing-released recommendations.
• Establish, monitor, and report departmental performance measures, including cost to service per loan, loans serviced per full-time equivalent, payment posting accuracy and timeliness, escrow analysis accuracy, lien perfection and lien release aging against statutory deadlines, investor reporting timeliness and accuracy, custodial reconciliation aging, and complaint resolution time.
• Direct administration of servicing platforms, including the core system, mortgage servicing software, and consumer and mortgage origination systems; ensure programming changes, general ledger and third-party interfaces, data conversions, and mapping are tested, documented, and incorporated into procedures. Recommend and implement process, technology, and workflow improvements, including platform enhancements and conversions, digital self-service adoption, and automation, governing automated and AI-assisted tools with appropriate human review and audit trails.
• Partner across Mortgage, Consumer and Indirect Lending, Accounting, Information Technology, branch teams, investors, and vendors to coordinate cross-functional initiatives, align timelines and expectations, and represent Loan Servicing on organizational projects.
• Serve as the senior point of escalation for complex servicing, accounting, interface, and member service issues; drive resolution to root cause and integrate the team in solutions.
• Oversee servicing of employee and Credit Union board and committee member loans, ensuring all member and Credit Union information is handled with the highest levels of confidentiality, security, file integrity, and audit compliance.
• Maintains in-depth knowledge of and completes all required annual compliance training, including the Bank Secrecy Act, USA PATRIOT Act, OFAC, privacy, and information security.