DS News

72 S U C C E S S F O R M U L A S / T O R Y B A R R I N G E R DS News is proud to present a periodic series chronicling the building of successful firms. FROM THE GROUND UP With industry roots that reach back three decades, BSI Financial Services has since blossomed into a thriving special servicing company that's successful to the core. ere's no sugarcoating it: e mortgage servicing game is a tough one to stay in, and with recent added challenges stemming from stricter regulation and the need for enhanced quality control, it's gotten a lot tougher in the last few years. ese days, the ability to roll with the punches is essential just to keep steady—as the team at BSI Financial Services is well aware. We recently visited BSI's North Texas headquarters to see the inner workings and speak with executives on the company's history, its philosophy, and what it takes to be a successful servicer in the post-crisis era. EARLY CHALLENGES While BSI's full history goes back nearly 30 years (to 1986, when it serviced motorcycle leases and auto loans as Bank Services, Inc.), the firm first started taking shape into what it is today in 2005, when entrepreneur and Servis One founder Gagan Sharma took an interest in acquiring the company. A year later, the purchase was final, and BSI morphed into a dedicated subservicer. Looking back nearly a decade later, Sharma, now president and CEO of BSI, says the early days were some of the hardest. "At the time that I acquired it, it was a small mortgage company that was operating as a division of a bank—not really growing [and] not prof itable, either," Sharma told DS News. "And that was the tough part. Right on day one of the acquisition, we actually had to shrink the company to its core. … As part of the acquisition, we only took nine people. We formed the core of the company." In the years that followed, the focus shifted from creating a foundation to building on it. In 2007, BSI acquired the outsourcing division of due diligence and quality control firm SRS Group, counterbalancing the already established servicing operation and bringing in close to 100 clients on the origination side. From there, the next big challenge came in trying to raise capital, a task made all the more difficult by the timing—late 2008, "absolutely the worst time in the century to be trying to raise capital," as Sharma put it. Just two years later, amid the fallout of the housing crash and default crisis, BSI expanded its offerings with the launch of two new complementary businesses: Entra Default Solutions, which provides foreclosure trustee services in California, Texas, Nevada, and Arizona; and Entra Asset Management, a firm specializing in REO outsourcing. ese days, the company employs an estimated 450 people in seven offices around the United States, along with a small offshore operation in India.

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