Two years after a huge Texas-based bank failed, the financial institution that took over its assets is expanding mortgage operations. A hundred positions will be added at a new facility in the Grand Canyon State.
Guaranty Bank was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision in August 2009. The failure of the $13 billion bank, which had its headquarters in Austin, was projected to cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. $3 billion.
Birmingham, Ala.-based BBVA Compass took over Guaranty and acquired most of its assets.
In addition to a mortgage operations center in Birmingham, BBVA now operates two centers in Texas: one in McAllen and another in Laredo.
But now BBVA is expanding further west.
On Wednesday, the bank announced that it is opening a fourth mortgage operations center in Tempe, Ariz. The new facility will enable the company “to better service its customers residing in the Pacific time zone.”
But BBVA faces competition for mortgage employees in Tempe. JPMorgan Chase & Co. held a job fair earlier this month in an effort to recruit 310 employees for its own mortgage operations facility there.
Still, BBVA sees more opportunity in the city.
“Tempe is a natural fit for our new mortgage operations center,” Jon Mulkin, BBVA Compass consumer segment director, said in the news release. “We currently have space in the city with existing infrastructure that we will be able to leverage.
“In addition, Tempe has a large labor pool of mortgage professionals which is useful for recruiting.”
Companies that contributed to the pool of available mortgage employees in Tempe include Option One Mortgage Corp., which laid off Tempe employees in September 2007; Wells Fargo & Co., which laid off 121 wholesale employees in March 2007; and Clear Choice Financial, which was headquartered in Tempe when it became insolvent in January 2007.
BBVA said that it plans to hire as many as 100 mortgage professionals for the new center.
Once the Tempe recruits are in place, around 400 mortgage professionals “specifically focused on supporting the bank’s mortgage process” will be employed at all four of the company’s mortgage operations centers.
