Hemant Choksi pens down his journey at Ocwen APAC and the future of the lending business.

Looking back at my journey with Ocwen till now, it’s been quite an interesting one to see myself and the organization evolve with the need of the hour. I've been associated with Ocwen since August 2002 and have served in multiple roles gaining knowledge in the mortgage servicing industry. ?I started my career as an Associate on the floor handling customer calls and now leading in the role of Vice President, Lending Operations - Ocwen APAC. From focusing on processes in the early days to now having an employee-centric culture, I’ve experienced it all. From learning the hard way on-the-job to building structured programs, we’ve covered many milestones along the way and established ourselves as leaders in the mortgage-servicing industry. One thing I never let my title decide for me was my role or the scope of work! Not having the “this is not my job” attitude lets you learn more.

I believe that my leadership style evolved along with Ocwen owing to the changing times, moving from a just-in-time approach (or firefighting) to a well-thought-through and contingency planning approach, we learned and moved forward with much more clarity. Our growth was rapid and well planned, with it came the need of engaging employees in many extra-curricular activities including sports, to facilitate collaboration and camaraderie. These activities also helped us build confidence, be entrepreneurial and improve our leadership skills. I had the good fortune of being part of this evolution of building a nurturing and caring environment for our people.

What I do now is manage the Lending Operations in APAC for multiple lines of business:

1. Consumer Direct

2. Correspondent Lending - Delegated, Mandatory, and Non-delegated.

3. Reverse Lending

4. Flow MSR

Other than these, of course, I like to help and be involved wherever I can.

We have grown in the value chain providing an edge across cost, quality and scalability. In 2020, the lending practice has doubled the volume.

What makes the team phenomenal is that they were able to achieve these numbers in the middle of a pandemic in two of the hardest-hit countries with stringent lockdowns. The growth we witnessed after 2019 was unique because of how our culture has evolved over the years. We created and nurtured a collaborative and supportive culture.

Learning from this? Keep an open mind, the ability to evaluate and pivot strategies accordingly lets one stay relevant and alive. Ocwen thrives on its people’s success and their entrepreneurial spirit. It helped me throughout my journey here from a rookie to many firsts in my career i.e., managing teams at the Uruguay near-shore facility as well as the first manager to independently manage operations for customer service both on and offshore, to be the first Vice President in APAC, to setting up the lending business that grew 8X in December 2019.

In the forthcoming year, Ocwen APAC plans to grow the lending operation by introducing new products and scaling into newer territories; to become a dominant player in terms of reverse lending market share, and to increase the consumer-direct market share. It is a great time to be part of this growth story.

At Ocwen, we operate with a start-up mindset and aim to remain market competitive at the same time. For a team member joining the lending team, they can look forward to:

1. Best-in-class training - We are in a highly specialized domain but that is not a barrier to entry. We have robust classroom training programs to assist employees to learn and understand the residential mortgage market. Post-training employees are provided required support as per their needs and we handhold them until they are ready.

2. Enriching and nourishing culture - Ocwen has an open-door policy and always had one. From Dinosaurs like me to the frontline supervisor follow this approach. You will get to meet and interact with various levels of management regularly to get updates, insights, give feedback, and/or just say Hello! Employee wellness has also become a core part of the company culture.

3. Growth - Along with domain knowledge we do value employee attitude, skills, and talent. Most of our leaders joined Ocwen at entry-level jobs and have grown through the system, into managing various lines of business.

It’s been such an interesting experience with Ocwen! 20 years of association and I still feel a great sense of excitement for the time to come and to be the best version of myself every single day.?