OREANDA-NEWS. Fitch Ratings has affirmed the U.S. residential mortgage servicer rating for Cenlar FSB (Cenlar) as follows:

--U.S. residential primary servicer rating for prime product at 'RPS2'.

The Rating Outlook is Stable.

The affirmation and Stable Outlook reflect Cenlar's established servicing platform and strength of its management team.

The company has been servicing residential loans since 1970 and non-agency RMBS loans since 1994. The servicer maintains a highly integrated servicing platform. It utilizes Black Knight Financial Services' Mortgage Servicing Package (MSP) as its primary servicing system of record. It also maintains a dedicated team that uses various proprietary tools and enhancements. Cenlar continues to invest in its servicing platform, including enhancements to its web and telephony systems to provide greater self-service opportunities to its borrowers.

Cenlar has an effective enterprise risk management (ERM) structure and has made enhancements to its quality assurance and compliance testing programs. The company maintains three levels of risk management: internal audit, ERM, and compliance. Risk rankings are completed annually and the servicer performs monthly formal performance reviews of all operational areas and conducts risk assessment by meeting with individual operational managers to determine or identify the risks. Fitch believes the continued enhancements made by the servicer strengthen the company's ability to comply with its regulatory servicing responsibilities.

Over the past year, the servicer has grown its servicing portfolio by approximately 29% and increased its full-time equivalent (FTE) servicing staff by 32%. To support its growing loan volume, the servicer has also expanded to a new location in Tempe, AZ, in addition to its four locations in Ewing, NJ.

On Oct. 13, 2014, Cenlar announced that Gregory S. Tornquist, the company's president and CEO since 2008, was elected as chairman of the board of Cenlar and its holding company, Cenlar Capital Corporation (CCC), which was made effective Jan. 1, 2015.

Cenlar, an operating subsidiary of CCC, is a privately held (employee-owned), federally chartered savings bank. Fitch does not rate the credit or financial strength of Cenlar or its parent CCC. However, Fitch's financial institutions group reviewed Cenlar's financial statements to provide an internal assessment, as a company's financial condition is a component of Fitch's servicer rating analysis.

The servicer continues to be an active participant in the servicing of new prime RMBS issuances, and since 2013, has been the industry's most active servicer of securitized RMBS prime transactions, servicing approximately 19,000 loans totaling approximately $11 billion.

As of Sept. 30, 2015, Cenlar serviced approximately 1.65 million loans totaling $351 billion. This is further broken down as 19,139 non-agency prime RMBS loans totaling $11 billion; 1,364,689 GSE loans totaling $273 billion; and 260,804 other loans totaling $66.8 billion being serviced. Other loans include clients' assets, private investors, housing authority, jumbo, HELOC, ALT-A, and second mortgages.