On Wednesday, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) announced that it is planning to add nearly 1,000 mortgage servicing jobs in Central Ohio.
JPMorgan stated that the new employees would be added to the existing mortgage servicing staff at Easton, after its new office space at Gahanna is revamped later this year. According to the company, the additional workforce would help the distressed homeowners.
At present, JPMorgan has about 17,000 employees in the Ohio region, the largest for any private sector company. The present expansion is the company’s second major job creation in Central Ohio. In 2009, the company had announced a plan to add 1,150 employees in the Columbus and Westerville areas of the region.
JPMorgan’s main purpose behind the creation of more mortgage servicing jobs is to deal with the mortgage foreclosure mess that the company is currently facing. On the whole, the company plans to hire 2,000 to 3,000 people across the country to tackle mortgage-related problems.
Since October 2010, JPMorgan has been facing the foreclosure crisis. Last year, the company, along with Bank of America Corporation (BAC) and Ally Financial Inc., had temporarily suspended foreclosures across the country after the detection of various flaws in the foreclosure documents.
Following this experience, the regulators along with the state attorney generals (AGs) had started an inquiry on almost all mortgage servicers including JPMorgan, BofA, Ally Financial Inc., Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) and Citigroup Inc. (C). Finally, earlier this month, the regulators announced an agreement, under which the 14 largest mortgage servicers, including JPMorgan, BofA and Well Fargo, would review all foreclosed loans from 2009 and pay back losses where cases were messed up.
Hence, we believe that JPMorgan’s present hiring initiative is a step towards correcting the mistakes committed in the mortgage related foreclosures.
Currently, JPMorgan retains a Zacks # 3 Rank, which translates into a short-term ‘Hold’ rating. Also, considering the fundamentals, we maintain our long-term “Neutral” recommendation on the stock.
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