55
Servicing Association, which I served as
Chairman for at the time but was always involved
with even before then. rough NMSA, all the
banks and nonbanks worked with the agencies to
come up with a good plan to help our customers.
In times of need, the industry pulls together, and
that's something different from prior to 2007. We
learned our lesson from the meltdown of 2007-
2008 that a strong, cohesive industry is needed in
a time of crisis, so now we help each other out to
solve problems.
Having joined Carrington
during the subprime crisis
of 2008, what lessons were
learned from this experience,
and can any of those lessons
be applied to the housing
situation of today?
I think back to the subprime days and,
compared to now, risk management and
compliance are critical. Everyone has built out
their infrastructures and has realized that you
need solid risk management and compliance to
be successful. To run your company and manage
your operations, data—in the right format—is
critical.
e obvious lesson to learn from that period
was the results of bad underwriting guidelines
and decisions: they will catch up with you
and cause harm. During the 2000s, everybody
seemed to get amnesia about that.
One of the other big things was servicing.
Servicing is critical to the role of taking care of
your customer. Since 2008, and the crisis at that
time, a great deal of money was poured into
the system because everybody knew what was
important. e investment in technology, people,
and staff to improve the servicing industry is
another the bigger change from that time of the
subprime crisis.
√FROM HIS PEERS
"Wes is a strong
leader and
has generously
shared his
knowledge and
experience in
many industry
meetings and
get togethers. I
have always
valued his
opinion and
friendship."
—Bob Caruso
CEO, ServiceMac
