Fannie Mae said it will give servicers more financial incentives to help borrowers avoid foreclosure.
The government-sponsored enterprise said Wednesday that it plans to measure and evaluate the performance of mortgage servicers and link servicer performance "to homeowners the servicer has helped, and the customer's experience with their servicer."
Fannie did not say how large the monetary awards to servicers would be or how it would measure borrower experiences.
It also did not say whether servicers who do poorly would be penalized.
Leslie Peeler, Fannie's vice president of servicing portfolio management, said in a press release that the program will "promote transparency, accountability and excellence in mortgage servicing."
Peeler, a former trader at GMAC Inc.'s Residential Capital LLC mortgage unit, said the "Servicer Total Achievement and Rewards" program will create "measurable expectations" to align servicers with Fannie's business objective of "keeping people in their homes."
Still, the program appeared to conflict with Fannie's efforts in September to monitor servicers that had delayed in moving delinquent loans to foreclosure. At that time Fannie said it would do on-site reviews and assess fees to give servicers "a financial incentive to comply with Fannie Mae policies."
