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The #1 Reason Consumers Sell Their Structured Settlements Is to Pay Bills, According to Survey by J.G. Wentworth : Current financial environment seen as catalyst for sales of ‘illiquid financial assets’

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BRYN MAWR, Pa. (PRWEB) October 28, 2008

The survey represents some of the most concrete insights on the attitudes of the estimated 2 million Americans who hold some $ 100 billion in structured settlements. Structured settlements were introduced in the U.S. in the 1970s as an alternative to lump sum settlements of legal claims.

“What these survey findings tell us is that consumers are looking to tap into the value of illiquid financial assets like structured settlements,” said Ken Murray, chief marketing officer for J.G. Wentworth. “Approximately 71% of the surveyed consumers selling all or part of their structured settlements have held them for more than 10 years, and we believe that the current financial environment will accelerate that trend.”

While structured settlements provide a stream of payments over a defined period, often people find they need access to their funds now, whether to address immediate financial needs like paying bills or to plan for the future by starting a business, financing home improvement or paying for college tuition for themselves or family members, Mr. Murray noted.

“Structured settlements are established for many different reasons, and attempt to take into account the potential future needs of the plaintiff while providing a reliable source of income,” Mr. Murray said. “Unfortunately, the inflexibility of this structure can make it difficult to adapt to life’s events. Selling part or all of a structured settlement offers consumers the financial flexibility they may need to deal with a problem or take advantage of an opportunity.”

About the J.G. Wentworth family of companies

J.G. Wentworth, Inc., based in Bryn Mawr, PA, is the nation’s oldest, largest and most respected buyer of deferred payments for illiquid financial assets like structured settlements, annuities and, through dedicated subsidiaries, life insurance policies. Since 1992, J.G. Wentworth has purchased over $ 3 billion of future payment obligations from consumers and is also the nation’s largest securitizer of structured settlement and annuity backed notes. The company’s notes are rated AAA by Standard & Poor’s Corporation.

For more information about J.G. Wentworth, go to http://www.jgwentworth.com.







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Industry Leader Announces Great Strides Helping Homeowners Reduce Foreclosures And Achieve Affordable Mortgage Payments.

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Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (PRWEB) October 28, 2008

First Universal Lending, announced today that it has been achieving a large volume of success in it’s ongoing negotiations with lending institutions to help their clients with their loan modifications, and in particular has been conducting settlement conferences with lenders in the offices of First Universal.

First Universal Lending has built an extensive working relationship with a number of lenders and mortgage servicing facilities nationwide, and now has a number of them actually visiting their corporate office on a weekly basis to handle the large volume of clients directly.

First Universal Lending helps thousands of clients by handling the often tedious and difficult task of renegotiating their current mortgage terms with their existing lenders. This is accomplished through First Universals vast group of highly trained professionals, and state of the art software systems, all designed with the goal of achieving complete client record automation, and speed along with efficiency thus saving their clients from the hours and hours of back and forth dealings with their often unorganized and overburdened lender.

About First Universal Lending LLC

First Universal Lending LLC is a lender that has been servicing retail clients since 2002 and the wholesale and securitization enterprises dates back to 1994. With billions of dollars in transactions and a group of in excess of 200 in personnel, First Universal is a leading private company in the consumer finance industry. The firm is a member of the Better Business Bureau and after servicing in excess of 100,000 thousand clients the firm has a “B” Rating andhas a complaint rate of less than one half of one percent. The firm also has had additional strategic relationships throughout its existence with high profile lending institutions and service providers/counter parties, including Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers, HSBC Bank, Goldman Sachs, mortgage division and the Lending Tree group of companies. The firm provides additional financial industry services through a number of other affiliated enterprises, including but not limited to, Emery Fed Inc., which is a division of Emery Federal Credit Union and Western Thrift & Loan — a depository institution that has the approval to provide loans through major financial institutions in the majority of all states in North America.

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New York Law School Announces New Master’s Degree in Real Estate Law

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New York, NY (PRWEB) November 6, 2008

New York Law School, one of the oldest independent law schools in the nation, today announced that it will offer an LL.M. degree in Real Estate Law, the only program of its kind in New York City and one of only four in the nation, to begin in the spring 2009 semester.

“The program will allow our students the opportunity to learn about real estate in the real estate capital of the United States,” Dean and President Richard A. Matasar said. “With the launch of the Law School’s Center for Real Estate Studies last year and the addition of four wonderful real estate experts to our faculty, New York Law School is developing a leading presence in the area of real estate law.”

The degree will initially offer two concentrations: one in Finance and Development and the other in Public Policy and Regulation. The program will help students develop the skills needed to excel in transactional practice or governmental affairs related to real property development, and provide them with a rich understanding of the interrelated legal issues, business principles, and policy concerns involved in real estate transactions, development, and financing. The LL.M. is designed to be flexible, allowing full-time students to complete the 27-credit program in one year, while part-time students can be enrolled in the program for up to four years.

The program will be directed by Professor Marshall Tracht, a real estate expert who was recruited from Hofstra Law School to develop the LL.M. degree at New York Law School. Along with Professor Tracht, the Law School has hired three other leading property and real estate professionals to help develop the School’s real estate programs: Professor Richard H. Chused from Georgetown University; Professor Gerald Korngold from Case Western Reserve University; and Professor Elise Boddie from Fordham Law School.

New York Law School’s LL.M. program will offer a wide array of courses taught by a mix of full-time faculty and leading practitioners from the New York City bar, and will emphasize business knowledge and skills such as contract negotiation and drafting, as well as more traditional study of legal principles. In keeping with its focus on the challenges and opportunities of practice in the real world, it is the only program in real estate law to require a course in the complex ethical issues surrounding real estate practice, business, and regulation.

“The LL.M. in Real Estate is part of New York Law School’s continuing emphasis on developing innovative programs that prepare students to excel in the practice of law,” said Professor Tracht. “By allowing students to study advanced topics in law, business, and regulation, and to develop their professional skills through close instruction from leading members of the real estate industry, the LL.M. curriculum will provide the tools needed to practice law at the highest levels, or to make the transition from legal practice to a career on the business side of real estate.”

The creation of the new LL.M. degree comes a little more than a year after the Law School launched its seventh specialized academic center, the Center for Real Estate Studies, dedicated to the study of both the private practice of real estate law and the public regulation of real estate. The Center is led by Professor Andrew R. Berman. The Center and the LL.M. program will be integrated, providing real estate opportunities for J.D. and LL.M. students, as well as events for alumni and the real estate community at large. The LL.M. program will also draw on the offerings of the law school’s Center for New York City Law, run by Professor Ross Sandler, which offers unique courses and programs on governmental policy and land use in NYC.

The primary faculty members affiliated with the new LL.M. program are Professors Berman, Boddie, Chused, Korngold, and Tracht.

Professor Berman, formerly a partner with Sidley Austin Brown & Wood’s New York Real Estate Group, spent nearly 15 years in private practice prior to joining the Law School. He has represented clients in all aspects of commercial real estate finance, including complex financing transactions such as mezzanine loans, preferred equity, and financing intended for securitization markets. He has extensive experience in real estate development projects, the sale and acquisition of real property and mortgage loan portfolios, and complex commercial leasing. He has been teaching at New York Law School since 2002. Some of the courses he teaches are Landlord-Tenant Law, Cooperatives and Condominiums Law, and Real Estate Transactions and Finance.

Professor Elise Boddie joined New York Law School this past year. Most recently, she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. Her expertise includes land use planning and state and local governmental law. Prior to joining Fordham, she was an Associate Director of Litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund. She also worked at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, where she practiced corporate litigation.

Before joining the New York Law School faculty this past fall, Professor Richard H. Chused was Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He is an expert on an expert on property law, law and gender, copyright law, and cyberlaw. His recently published work includes a work on the treatment of the poor in American landlord-tenant law, a lengthy history of the famous landlord-tenant case Javins v. First National Realty Corporation, and a history of landlord-tenant court in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century.

Professor Gerald Korngold also joined the Law School this past fall, from Case Western Reserve University, where he was a professor and served as Dean from 1997 to 2006. He was a professor at New York Law School from 1979 to 1987 and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1984 to 1986. In addition to many articles, he is the author of Private Land Use Arrangements: Easements, Covenants, and Equitable Servitudes (2004); co-author of two casebooks, Real Estate Transactions (2004) and Cases and Text on Property (2004); and co-editor of Property Stories (2004).

Professor Marshall Tracht will direct the LL.M. program. He teaches Bankruptcy, Real Estate Transactions and Finance, and Advanced Real Estate Financing. He is co-author of a leading textbook on real estate law, a member of the editorial board of The Banking Law Journal, a contributing editor to the Real Estate Law Report, and has written extensively in the areas of real estate development and construction financing, workouts, and bankruptcy. He is also the co-author of Land Transfer and Finance: Cases and Materials. Before going into academia, Professor Tracht practiced in the real estate and bankruptcy groups at Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, D.C., and clerked for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia.

For more information about the LL.M. in Real Estate Law, please visit http://www.nyls.edu/realestate.

About the Center for Real Estate Studies:

The Center for Real Estate Studies (CRES) at New York Law School provides students with a unique educational opportunity to study both the private practice and public regulation of real estate. Leveraging the School’s location in the prime real estate market of New York City, the Center enables students to gain practical experience in the real estate community and make contacts for future employment. Launched in 2007, the Center offers an extensive selection of classroom courses, advanced seminars, and independent study projects, as well as externships in governmental offices and real estate firms. It also sponsors conferences, symposia, and continuing legal education programs on a broad spectrum of issues. The Center for Real Estate Studies aims to help bridge the existing gap between the private practice and academic study of real estate, and is becoming one of the premier research centers in the country for the study of real estate.

About New York Law School:

Founded in 1891, New York Law School is an independent law school located in lower Manhattan near the city’s centers of law, government, and finance. New York Law School’s renowned faculty of prolific scholars has built the School’s strength in such areas as constitutional law, civil and human rights, labor and employment law, media and information law, urban legal studies, international and comparative law, and a number of interdisciplinary fields. The School is noted for its eight academic centers: Center for International Law, Center for New York City Law, Center for Professional Values and Practice, Center for Real Estate Studies, Center on Business Law & Policy, Center on Financial Services Law, Institute for Information Law & Policy, and Justice Action Center. New York Law School has more than 13,000 graduates and enrolls some 1,500 students in its full- and part-time J.D. program and its Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Taxation program. http://www.nyls.edu

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Seyfarth Shaw Announces Establishment of Covered Bonds Team : Specialized Attorneys Help Clients Understand and Capitalize on Emerging Investment Opportunity in the United States

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NEW YORK (PRWEB) November 6, 2008

The Covered Bonds Team will work under the direction of Shirley Curfman, partner in the Corporate Practice Group in the firm’s Los Angeles office, and Nanette Heide, partner in the Corporate Practice Group in the firm’s New York office. Curfman, who recently joined the firm’s Los Angeles office, has provided legal advice in the structured finance market for over 10 years and served as legal counsel to the mortgage bond indenture trustee in one of only two covered bond transactions in which U.S. financial institutions issued bonds. Heide’s practice focuses on corporate and financing transactions, including equity and debt financings, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances, joint ventures and commercial transactions. Curfman and Heide are joined by other attorneys in the Corporate and Real Estate Practice Groups, including Peter Korda and Andrew Pearlstein.

“Seyfarth Shaw is well-positioned to help clients understand and initiate covered bonds offerings,” Heide said. “Drawing on experience in structured finance, as well as Shirley’s insights into the structure of covered bonds, we are ready to meet the needs of our clients in this expanding market.”

Covered bonds are debt securities backed by cash flows from mortgages or public sector loans. In many ways, they are similar to asset-backed securities created in securitization, but covered bond assets remain on the issuer’s consolidated balance sheet. Covered bonds have been the main source of mortgage funding in Europe since the 18th century, but to date, only two U.S. depository institutions have issued covered bonds. The U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have been promoting a covered bond market strategy as an attractive source for funding residential mortgage loans. As a complement to the policy statement previously issued by the FDIC, the Treasury Department recently issued a best practices guide to specifically address covered bonds backed by pools of eligible residential mortgages.

“I’m pleased that covered bonds, long utilized in Europe, are making their way into the U.S. market as an additional funding source for mortgage loans,” Curfman added. “We have the resources, skills, and experience with covered bonds to work with lenders to effectively structure these financing vehicles.”

Seyfarth Shaw is a full-service law firm with over 750 attorneys located in nine offices throughout the United States including Chicago, New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento, as well as Brussels, Belgium. The firm provides a broad range of legal services in the areas of real estate, labor and employment, employee benefits, litigation and business services. Seyfarth Shaw’s practice reflects virtually every industry and segment of the country’s business and social fabric. Clients include over 200 of the Fortune 500 companies, financial institutions, newspapers and other media, hotels, health care organizations, airlines and railroads. The firm also represents a number of federal, state, and local governmental and educational entities. For more information, please visit http://www.seyfarth.com.







IMS Expert Services Forms Financial Crisis Expert Practice Group

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Pensacola, FL (PRWEB) November 10, 2008

IMS ExpertServices, the global leader in expert witness search services, announced today the formation of a Financial Crisis Expert Practice Group. IMS assembled the team to provide experts needed during fallout from the current economic crisis.

“IMS ExpertServices has years of experience locating, vetting and placing financial industry experts,” said President Bill Wein. “Since the start of the year we’ve been monitoring movement in the markets. We’ve identified five areas of concentration where we anticipate a strong demand for best of class experts for the financial services sector: mortgage-backed securities, particularly securitization of subprime mortgage loans; other undersecured asset-backed securities, particularly resulting from credit card securitization; interest rate swaps and other derivatives; municipal bonds; and executive compensation matters. Our Financial Crisis Expert Practice Group stands ready to assist our clients with these and other financial sector issues.”

IMS provides expert witnesses for attorneys at over 90 of the AmLaw 100 law firms, as well as top notch regional boutique firms. Though some clients may be accustomed to thinking of IMS as the best resource for technical experts for patent infringement litigation, in fact IMS has deep experience with the financial services sector. IMS experts have worked on some of the largest bankruptcies in the past several years including WorldCom, Enron, Iridium and other significant cases in the courts.

While IMS is skilled in these business segments, so are its experts. “We’ve identified individuals of significant expertise prepared to opine on matters arising from credit and finance litigation,” said Mike Wein, IMS’s CEO. “First class experts are always a finite resource. Our Financial Crisis Expert Practice Group is designed to ensure our clients have the expert witness resources they need when they face challenges arising from the economic situation.”

About IMS

IMS ExpertServices is the legal industry’s premier expert witness search firm, proudly serving over 90 of the firms on the AmLaw 100, American Lawyer Magazine’s ranking of the 100 largest and most profitable law firms in the U.S. With offices in Denver and Atlanta and headquartered in Pensacola, IMS provides the most qualified experts and litigation consultants to attorneys representing clients in business-to-business litigation. More than 300 law firms and 1800 attorneys worldwide partner with IMS ExpertServices to meet their expert witness and litigation consultant needs. For more information call 877.838.8464.

Media inquiries, please contact:

Deborah Brousseau

Manager, Internet Marketing

IMS Expert Services

850.473.6977

dbrousseau@ims-expertservices.com

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BMO Bank of Montreal Adopts Nomis Solutions’ Pricing Optimization Across Multiple Product Areas

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San Bruno, CA (PRWEB) November 10, 2008

Nomis Solutions, the leading provider of best-in-class Pricing and Profitability Management for financial services companies, today announced that BMO Bank of Montreal (NYSE: BMO) has selected the Nomis Price Optimizer. BMO will deploy Nomis Solutions’ award-winning pricing optimization solution for originations and retention across multiple product areas with an initial focus on personal and indirect lending. Scheduled to deploy its first set of optimized rates early in 2009, BMO is anticipating greater agility in the rapidly changing market.

By deploying the Nomis Price Optimizer across multiple product areas, BMO will be leveraging a best-in-class pricing and profitability management approach that is based on a quantifiable understanding of the impact of pricing on customer response, product performance, and risk. BMO will then have a more consistent, repeatable and efficient pricing process that allows them to make changes more dynamically and with a higher level of confidence.

“With our work in the Canadian market over the past two years, we’ve learned a lot about customer response to offers and pricing and have demonstrated our ability to materially impact financial performance for our customers,” said Nomis Solutions’ Chairman and CEO,

Dennis Stradford. “We look forward helping BMO adopt a more advanced and dynamic approach to pricing strategically across its retail banking businesses.”

The award-winning Nomis Price Optimizer is designed for executives responsible for pricing loan and deposit products who want to use pricing strategically to drive financial performance at the national, regional, and local levels. This solution is the backbone of the Pricing and Profitability Management suite and delivers a clear understanding of customer response and how price impacts performance. By leveraging this information, the pricing team can quickly pinpoint which segments are under-priced or over-priced and better tailor pricing decisions to meet performance targets. Nomis Price Optimizer also helps build a more attractive portfolio mix to meet the “originations to order” requirements of the securitizations market. Currently deployed at more than 12 banks and finance companies worldwide, Nomis Price Optimizer optimizes more than $ 5 Billion in consumer lending each month.

About Nomis Solutions

Nomis Solutions enables best-in-class Pricing and Profitability Management for financial services companies. Through a combination of advanced analytics, innovative technology, and tailored business processes, the Pricing and Profitability ManagementTM Suite delivers quick time-to-benefit, and improves financial and operational performance throughout the customer acquisition and portfolio management processes.

The Pricing and Profitability ManagementTM Suite of business solutions includes the award-winning Nomis Price OptimizerTM, the Nomis Offer OptimizerTM, the Customer Portfolio OptimizerTM, and the Nomis NavigatorTM. These solutions are designed to meet the specific requirements of auto finance, home equity lending, personal lending, mortgage, and deposits executives. Select customers include Abbey, AmeriCredit, Chrysler Financial, HBOS plc, and Royal Bank of Canada. Headquartered in San Bruno, CA, Nomis Solutions also has offices in London, United Kingdom. Visit http://www.nomissolutions.com or contact us at 650-588-9800.

Nomis Solutions, the Nomis Price Optimizer, Nomis Offer Optimizer, the Customer Portfolio Optimizer and the Nomis Pricing and Profitability Management Suite are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nomis Solutions, in the United States and in other countries. Other product and company names herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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Equity Based Services, Inc. Thaws Credit Freeze

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Chicago, IL (PRWEB) November 12, 2008

Equity Based Services, Inc. (“EBS”) announced an equity recapitalization of its AMS IV Self Storage facility in Austin, TX. The property was originally financed by a large European Bank and was refinanced with a Regional Midwestern Lender.

“Lenders are definitely more cautious than they were a year ago, but, we are still closing loans. We are placing debt not only on new acquisitions, but also on existing projects which are generally more difficult to finance. The fact that EBS paid back the original note and placed new debt with a new lender shows that there are still loan dollars available to strong sponsors with strong projects,” states Troy Downing, Principal, Equity Based Services, Inc.

Many Regional Banks have fared well in the face of failing National and International Banks. Regional banks tend to be portfolio lenders and have not been affected as much by the sub-prime and securitized loan industries. Consequently, these Banks still have liquidity and are still placing new debt.

The loan on AMS IV Austin is a three year note with a floating rate based on prime. The starting interest rate is 6% and the loan is Interest-Only for the first 2 years and amortizes in the 3rd year. The loan was facilitated through Tavernier Capital Partners.

“Texas is one of the top performing states in the Country for Self Storage. The fact that we have lending relationships all over the country has enabled our company to continue to secure favorable debt for our clients in the current challenging financing environment. We have found lenders to be receptive and eager to finance well situated Self Storage facilities with experienced well capitalized sponsors such as EBS,” states Saul Hoppenstein, Principal Tavernier Capital Partners.

“The financing terms, rates, and Interest-Only period that we were able to secure on this property allows a very strong cash flowing property to support strong returns to our investors. This property is cash flowing now and is expected to pay investors a strong 8% return in cash flow. Pro forma projections show this project yielding more than 20% per year upon repositioning and eventual sale. The ‘all-in’ return takes into account projected increases in NOI and property appreciation. In down and troubled economies, well positioned Self Storage assets continue to perform,” states Stephen Kaplan, CEO, Equity Based Services, Inc.

In 2008, EBS has acquired 15 new facilities. The vast majority of these were purchased with new debt and only a couple of these were loan assumptions. The availability of debt has a strong effect on Real Estate Markets. The refinancing of AMS IV Austin shows that there still is debt available for Commercial Real Estate deals.

“Cash flow real estate is becoming more and more of a commodity as investors look for safe investment vehicles that produce income and are not subject to Stock Market volatility. Self Storage allows strong cash flow returns with the security of a Real Estate backed asset. 2009 should be a banner year in the Self Storage Industry,” states Troy Downing

About Equity Based Services, Inc

EBS is a Private Real Estate Company specializing in the acquisition and management of self-storage property. EBS currently owns and operates nearly 60 Self-Storage properties in 10 states with a current market value of more than $ 300 Million. EBS also manages a family of Private Equity Funds for institutional and high net worth individual investors. The EBS Income Fund, the EBS Income and Growth Fund II, and the Pilot Equity Value Added Fund all closed in 2007. For more information, contact Kurt Ambrosius at 619-220-6700.

This Press Release is for informational purposes only and does not, in any way, constitute an offering to buy or sell securities.

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Iron Mountain and CONSOR Joint White Paper: Securitizing and Collateralizing Software Assets for the Capital Markets

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La Jolla, CA (PRWEB) November 12, 2008

Iron Mountain’s Intellectual Property Management group (IPM) and CONSOR are looking for additional experts to work on a white paper titled “Securitizing and Collateralizing Intangible Software Assets” see http://www.consor.com/ironmountain/Callforexperts.doc to provide expert commentary, recommendations and practical guidance to the primary and secondary capital markets. This white paper is for the financial community that provides investments (IPO, M&A, LBO, equity or debt position, etc.) to companies that have valuable software assets. The joint white paper is planned for inclusion in the Iron Mountain Knowledge Center to complement the current white paper “Leveraging Software Assets Via the Capital Markets” (see http://www.consor.com/ironmountain/CONSOR_IronMountain_LSA.pdf).

The intangible assets owned by many enterprises today include traditional IP (trademarks, copyrights, and patents), and non-traditional IP (trade secrets and knowhow). This non-traditional IP is better known as the software inventory. Many investments today are secured using the traditional IP of the organization, but seldom is the nontraditional IP used.

Usually the question of including the software inventory may not have been addressed in the financing, or even thought of, but knowing it’s value and registered position can help manage and leverage the investment. Furthermore, regulations for mergers and buyouts mean that enterprises must estimate the value of existing software inventories anyway for financial and tax reasons, such as required by FASB 141, FASB 142 and FASB 157.

Iron Mountain provides the software inventory to be registered in its Escrow for securitization and CONSOR provides for software identification and valuation analysis. This registry and valuation services assist counsel and stakeholders get a handle on their investment.

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Nomis Solutions Announces Pricing and Profitability Management Suite for Retail Banks

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San Bruno, CA (PRWEB) December 2, 2008

Nomis Solutions, a leader in best-in-class Pricing and Profitability Management for financial services companies, today revealed its expanded suite of solutions and services for optimal customer acquisition and portfolio management. Available immediately, the Nomis Solutions Pricing and Profitability Management SuiteTM for Retail Banks capitalizes on Nomis Solutions’ domain expertise within retail banking. Through a combination of advanced analytics, innovative technology, and tailored business practices and processes, the Suite for Retail Banks improves financial and operational performance on both sides of the balance sheet.

“In today’s turbulent market, pricing has taken on a new level of importance,” shared Kathleen Khirallah, managing director and practice leader of the banking practice at TowerGroup. “Consumer lending executives need to ensure they are appropriately pricing for profit and risk. Deposits executives need to price appropriately to achieve funding targets without ‘giving away the farm.’ These goals can only be successfully achieved by using an understanding of customer response to pricing — a key insight that is missing from most pricing decisions today.”

With a scarcity and higher cost of capital, unstable portfolios, and an unpredictable competitive landscape, bank executives need to be proactive and look for new approaches to pricing and profitability management. This begins with the rates they offer consumers for loans and deposits products. With the ability to quantify consumer response to pricing, executives can align pricing goals and a pricing strategy with business objectives and financial performance targets. Because they are able to forecast what new loans they can expect to acquire before putting actual prices into the market, banking and finance management can have an intelligent debate on the inevitable tradeoffs such as profit, volume and risk goals, tier/term mix, credit score distribution, and loan-to-value (LTV) that will occur as a result of a pricing action.

Once performance goals are set, prices can be optimized to achieve profit, volume and balance targets from the loan portfolio level down to the micro-segment level. Executives can measure the impact of a competitor price change or recent exit on their business. The benefits include: increased profits and/or market share, higher returns on assets, improved deposits balances, more control over risk, a cohesive view of key performance indicators (KPIs) and the use of a more structured, repeatable and efficient pricing process.

For lenders, the ability to predict the impact of price on consumer response enables them to optimize their credit and term mix within the context of their risk and asset backed securities (ABS) conduit tolerances. For deposits executives, an understanding of consumer response to deposit rates at the point of sale and renewal helps drive incremental margin improvements and helps banks reduce its overall cost of funds.

“Although pricing is one of the most effective ways to immediately impact financial performance, it’s dramatically underutilized by most banks today,” said Frank Rohde, chief marketing officer at Nomis Solutions. “Our analysis shows that responsiveness to price is changing on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, which is the most rapidly changing consumer behavior that we’ve witnessed to date. Executives need to better understand and quantify how this changing behavior is impacting their performance and if and when to make price changes in order to meet their business objectives.”

Three integrated solutions comprise the Pricing and Profitability Suite for Retail Banking:

Auto Finance Market Profits from Pricing and Profitability Management Suite from Nomis Solutions

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San Bruno, CA (PRWEB) December 2, 2008

Nomis Solutions, a leader in best-in-class Pricing and Profitability Management for financial services companies, today announced the immediate availability of its suite of solutions and services specifically tailored for auto finance companies. The Nomis Pricing and Profitability Management SuiteTM for Auto Finance capitalizes on Nomis Solutions’ domain expertise within auto finance and includes pricing, offer and portfolio optimization capabilities. Through a combination of advanced analytics, innovative technology, and tailored business practices and processes, the Suite for Auto Finance improves financial and operational performance.

A number of the world’s leading auto finance and bank executives were granted an exclusive preview of the Nomis Solutions Pricing and Profitability Management Suite at the Global Pricing Optimization Forum in New York. John William Snow, chairman of Cerberus Capital Management and former Secretary of the Treasury, delivered the keynote address and said, “Mis-pricing leads to misallocation of resources and waste in the system. In the current situation, mis-pricing has lead to cataclysmic results. But, businesses that are going to make it and break through to the other side are going to have to use analytics to really understand their customers in a way that’s beyond what they are doing today. We are doing it at Cerberus because we know it’s critical to success.”

Burdened by a combination of decreasing auto sales, declining margins, increasing losses, and a scarcity and higher cost of capital, auto finance executives need to be proactive and look for new approaches to pricing and profitability management. With the ability to quantify consumer response to pricing, executives can align pricing goals and a pricing strategy with business objectives and financial performance targets. This approach also supports an intelligent debate on the inevitable tradeoffs such as profit, volume and risk goals, tier/term mix, credit score distribution, and loan-to-value (LTV). Once performance goals are set, prices can be optimized to achieve profit, volume and credit mix targets from the portfolio level down to the micro-segment level.

Auto loans are the second largest subsector of asset-backed securities (ABS). Auto finance companies that are reliant on the ABS market are finding capital scarce and investors are demanding to know more about the underlying assets. This combination has resulted in an extremely selective secondary market that is requiring loan portfolios that are “originated-to-order” – meaning investors want transparent loan portfolios that offer only certain types of financing products to certain types of borrowers. However, most executives don’t have visibility into the makeup of the portfolio they would build based on the prices they are planning to put into the market. With Nomis Solutions Pricing and Profitability Management Suite, auto finance executives are able to forecast what they can expect to acquire as a result of a pricing action before putting prices into the market. The ability to predict the impact of price on consumer response enables them to optimize their credit and term mix within the context of their risk and ABS conduit tolerances.

The Pricing and Profitability Management Suite for Auto Finance includes:


Nomis Offer Optimizer: The Nomis Offer Optimizer is built for credit analysts that engage in deal-by-deal negotiations and want to customize offers to meet the needs of the auto finance company, the Finance & Insurance Manager, and end-consumer. This solution centralizes all the key data inputs required to make an informed decision, such as the characteristics of the borrower, vehicle and dealer, dealer history and the proposed deal terms. It also provides simulation and optimization capabilities for deal structuring and pricing so that credit analysts understand the impact of various options on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as profits and deal conversion before responding to the dealer.
Nomis Navigator: Designed specifically for senior management responsible for one product, a line of business with multiple products, or multiple lines of business, the Nomis Navigator is an executive dashboard that provides enhanced visibility into critical banking metrics for auto finance companies. This includes capturing actual and forecasted performance over time and highlighting areas of exposure in new originations by providing cautionary guidance and profit opportunities in the existing portfolio. It can be configured to meet the needs of a bank executive that is interested in better tracking KPIs such as volume, profit, credit mix, by product, geography and customer segment. In addition, alerts can be set up to quickly identify, diagnose and respond to emerging problems.
Nomis Price Optimizer: Created for executives responsible for pricing loan and deposit products who want to capitalize on strategic pricing to drive financial performance from the portfolio down to the micro-segment level. The award-winning Nomis Price Optimizer is the backbone of the Pricing and Profitability Suite and delivers a clear understanding of consumer response and how price impacts performance. By leveraging this information, pricing teams can quickly pinpoint which segments are incorrectly priced and better tailor pricing decisions to meet performance targets. Nomis Price Optimizer also helps build a more attractive portfolio mix to meet the “originations to order” requirements of the securitizations market.

“Nomis Solutions’ continued focus on the Auto Finance market in the U.S. and Canada is changing the way in which traditional and non-traditional lending institutions compete and service their customers,” said Frank Rohde, chief marketing officer at Nomis Solutions. “Auto Finance has always been astute at creating pricing models that account for the depreciation of the asset, incorporating customer response data and market and attitudinal changes. Nomis Solutions’ Pricing and Profitability Management for Auto Finance provides an integrated platform allowing executives to make decisions to better manage and optimize lending practices for profit improvements.”

Today’s announcement of Pricing and Profitability Management Suite for Auto Finance is complemented by the release of the Pricing and Profitability Management Suite for Retail Banks. Both solutions were unveiled to more than 75 bank and finance executives at the Pricing and Profitability Executive Forum in New York, and at the Pricing & Profitability Executive Summit in Europe that was co-hosted by TowerGroup and Nomis Solutions.

About Nomis Solutions

Nomis Solutions enables best-in-class Pricing and Profitability Management for financial services companies. Through a combination of advanced analytics, innovative technology, and tailored business processes, the Pricing and Profitability ManagementTM Suite delivers quick time-to-benefit, and improves financial and operational performance throughout the customer acquisition and portfolio management processes.

The Pricing and Profitability ManagementTM Suite of business solutions includes the award-winning Nomis Price OptimizerTM, the Nomis Offer OptimizerTM, the Customer Portfolio OptimizerTM, and the Nomis NavigatorTM. These solutions are designed to meet the specific requirements of auto finance, home equity lending, personal lending, mortgage, and deposits executives. Select customers include Abbey, AmeriCredit, Bank of Montreal, Chrysler Financial, HBOS plc, and Royal Bank of Canada. Headquartered in San Bruno, CA, Nomis Solutions also has offices in London, United Kingdom. Visit http://www.nomissolutions.com or contact us at 650-588-9800.

Nomis Solutions, the Nomis Price Optimizer, Nomis Offer Optimizer, the Customer Portfolio Optimizer and the Nomis Pricing and Profitability Management Suite are trademarks or registered tr

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