Director, Loan Servicing

Description

Summary

The Director of Loan Servicing is a senior departmental leadership role responsible for overseeing consumer, indirect, and residential mortgage servicing operations across the full post-funding loan lifecycle. This role provides strategic and hands-on leadership to ensure accuracy, regulatory compliance, operational excellence, and consistent, high-quality member experience. The Director leads servicing teams through subordinate leaders and serves as Sunward’s servicing authority with investors, auditors, examiners, and internal partners. While collections and foreclosure are managed separately, this role is accountable for the servicing data, notices, and handoffs that support those functions.

Key Responsibilities/Essential Functions

• Lead and develop the Loan Servicing function by setting clear performance expectations, coaching and developing staff, and building bench strength for current and future needs.
• Ensure trained backup coverage and documented procedures exist for all critical servicing functions, including investor reporting and remittance, custodial reconciliation, escrow analysis, loan boarding, payoffs, and wire releases, eliminating single points of failure.
• Translate lending strategy into annual Loan Servicing goals, plans, and priorities on a one-year horizon; direct execution and align progress with the Chief Lending Officer.
• Maintain accountability for all consumer, indirect, and mortgage servicing processes, including loan setup and boarding, payment processing and application, escrow administration and analysis, insurance and property tax monitoring, collateral and lien perfection, titling, lien and UCC releases, payoff processing, IRS reporting, and departmental reporting.
• Own servicing transfer governance for loans transferred in and out, including investor transfer approvals and lead times, boarding data integrity, required transfer notices, and address research and verification for returned notices.
• Ensure compliance with all secondary market and investor servicing requirements, including the FHLBank MPF program, Fannie Mae, and other applicable agencies and investors. 
• Maintain servicer eligibility and annual recertification, including net worth and liquidity representations, fidelity bond, and errors and omissions coverage. 
• Monitor repurchase, indemnification, make-whole, and recourse exposure and report it to senior leadership.
• Own the investor reporting and remittance calendar by remittance type; ensure loan-level reporting, edit and reject resolution, and remittances are accurate and within investor deadlines. Manage servicer scorecard and master servicer performance and hold compensatory fees at zero.
• Ensure principal and interest and tax and insurance custodial accounts are properly established and segregated, reconciled monthly within investor deadlines, and that reconciling items and unapplied or suspense funds are researched, aged, and resolved.
• Own the document custodian relationship, including collateral file custody, certification, and transfer, including the quality assurance plan, annual report and independent third-party review.
• Ensure compliance with all applicable federal and state servicing laws and regulations. Ensure policies, procedures, and internal control standards are documented, current, and consistently applied; monitor adherence, identify root causes of recurring issues, and escalate systemic risk to senior leadership. 
• Direct implementation of regulatory, investor, and system changes, including pending Regulation X servicing changes and NCUA records preservation requirements, owning the change plan, procedure updates, system configuration, testing, and training.
• Own a written quality control program with defect rate targets by severity and function-level testing across payment processing, escrow, insurance, payoffs, credit reporting, and investor accounting; trend findings, drive remediation to closure, and report results to leadership.
• Own the servicing complaint and error resolution program, including notices of error and requests for information within required acknowledgment and response deadlines, consumer complaint portal responses, root cause analysis, trending, and reporting.
• Serve as point person for all internal, external, regulatory, and investor audits and examinations; own finding closure and aging.
• Own risk-based oversight of all servicing third parties and any subservicer, including insurance and tax tracking, flood determination, electronic lien and title, lockbox and payment processors, and credit furnishing agents: due diligence, SOC 1 and SOC 2 review, annual quality control testing, service level scorecards, right-to-audit and exit provisions, and counterparty screening. Maintain Credit Union-authored policies rather than relying on vendor documentation.
• Maintain dual control and segregation of duties over all funds movement, including custodial and escrow disbursements, payoff and refund wires, and adjustments; enforce verbal callback verification on any change to payoff or disbursement instructions. Maintain servicing business continuity and disaster recovery procedures with annual review and approval, third- and fourth-party contingency planning, and incident reporting within required timeframes.
• Manage the Loan Servicing budget and contribute to annual budget planning. Provide the cost-to-service and operational assumptions used in mortgage servicing rights valuation; partner with Accounting and Finance to review and challenge quarterly valuation inputs, support impairment testing, and inform servicing-retained versus servicing-released recommendations.
• Establish, monitor, and report departmental performance measures, including cost to service per loan, loans serviced per full-time equivalent, payment posting accuracy and timeliness, escrow analysis accuracy, lien perfection and lien release aging against statutory deadlines, investor reporting timeliness and accuracy, custodial reconciliation aging, and complaint resolution time.
• Direct administration of servicing platforms, including the core system, mortgage servicing software, and consumer and mortgage origination systems; ensure programming changes, general ledger and third-party interfaces, data conversions, and mapping are tested, documented, and incorporated into procedures. Recommend and implement process, technology, and workflow improvements, including platform enhancements and conversions, digital self-service adoption, and automation, governing automated and AI-assisted tools with appropriate human review and audit trails.
• Partner across Mortgage, Consumer and Indirect Lending, Accounting, Information Technology, branch teams, investors, and vendors to coordinate cross-functional initiatives, align timelines and expectations, and represent Loan Servicing on organizational projects.
• Serve as the senior point of escalation for complex servicing, accounting, interface, and member service issues; drive resolution to root cause and integrate the team in solutions.
• Oversee servicing of employee and Credit Union board and committee member loans, ensuring all member and Credit Union information is handled with the highest levels of confidentiality, security, file integrity, and audit compliance.
• Maintains in-depth knowledge of and completes all required annual compliance training, including the Bank Secrecy Act, USA PATRIOT Act, OFAC, privacy, and information security.

Requirements

  Qualifications

• Minimum eight years of relevant experience in loan servicing, including substantial consumer and mortgage servicing experience. Experience in a credit union or other financial institution preferred.
• Minimum four years of supervisory or management experience, including experience leading through subordinate supervisors and managing departmental workflow, performance, projects, and budget.
• Solid experience in all facets of servicing, including escrow administration and analysis, collateral protection and lien perfection, custodial account reconciliation, payment processing, and loan setup and boarding, together with secondary market servicing requirements and servicer performance scorecards.
• Experience owning a control environment, including quality control testing, third-party, subservicer oversight, and serving as the department contact for internal, external, regulatory, and investor audits and examinations.
• Proven experience developing and leading effective teams and managing multiple concurrent processes or programs.
• Project management experience and experience with servicing system administration, conversions, and third-party interfaces preferred.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration or a related field preferred; or
• Relevant work experience combined with an advanced degree, coursework, or certification in a related field.

Leadership Competencies
Outcome & Results: Own your deliverables and KPIs-meet or exceed them by giving outcomes and overcoming obstacles.

Commitments: Treat W3s as promises – execute early, follow through consistently and renegotiate transparently when priorities shift. Reliability builds trust.

Business Maturity: Know your business – manage financials, operations and experiences with discipline and in full alignment with Sunward’s key results.

Growth Mindset: Be a learner not a knower – stay curious, ask questions, adapt quickly and embrace daily learning.

Preparation and Presence: Respect others by being early, prepared, and fully tuned in – never distracted or multitasking.

Feedback: Fuel growth by inviting, giving and acting on feedback – always candid, respectful and forward-focused.

Talent & Culture: Build culture through people – hire top talent, coach relentlessly, celebrate wins and manage performance though our Culture of Accountability. Model the culture and values of Sunward.

Experience and Craftsmanship: Set the bar at “the best” – deliver experiences that stand apart and never compromise on quality.

Knowledge

• Expert knowledge of mortgage and consumer loan servicing, including escrow analysis and compliance, investor accounting, reporting and remittance, custodial account requirements, monetary movement between general ledger accounts, payment processing options, and loan import and setup.
• Expert knowledge of federal and state servicing regulations, with the ability to interpret requirements and translate them into policy, procedure, system configuration, and training. Scope includes but is not limited to RESPA and Regulation X (escrow, notices of error, requests for information, force-placed insurance, servicing transfers, successor in interest, and general servicing policies, procedures, and record retention); TILA and Regulation Z (periodic statements, adjustable-rate change notices, prompt crediting, payoff statements, and transfer of ownership notices); the Homeowners Protection Act; flood insurance, including mandatory escrow of premiums; SCRA and the Military Lending Act; FCRA and Metro 2 furnishing accuracy and dispute handling; ECOA and Regulation B; UDAAP; IRS reporting on Forms 1098, 1099-A, 1099-C, and 1099-INT; and NCUA records preservation requirements, including the 2026 vital records rule.
• Knowledge of secondary market and investor servicing requirements, agency and investor guidelines, servicer eligibility and recertification, servicing transfers, document custody, and repurchase and recourse exposure.
• Working knowledge of core and servicing system administration, including product setup, general ledger and third-party interfaces, reporting, and member correspondence.
• Broad knowledge of adjacent disciplines, including consumer lending, indirect lending, mortgage lending, accounting, and technology, sufficient to coordinate handoffs and resolve cross-functional issues.
• Knowledge of quality control, internal control, and third-party risk management practices, and of coaching, training, and performance management practices to develop supervisors and staff.
• Broad perspective on loan servicing industry trends, with a competent understanding of Sunward’s organization and competitive environment.

Skills/Abilities

• Ability to use significant independent judgment on moderate to complex business problems with broad guidance, and to escalate high-impact issues appropriately.
• Ability to manage a functional budget, contribute to budget planning, and approve exceptions within delegated authority.
• Ability to discern and prioritize business risk at both the departmental and transaction level.
• Excellent leadership, staff development, and relationship management skills; able to manage and influence the autonomy of subordinate supervisors and resolve member and staff issues with professionalism and diplomacy while maintaining a close and caring touch with members.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to explain technical, data, and regulatory concepts clearly to members, staff, senior leaders, auditors, examiners, and investors.
• Ability to lead change management with numerous stakeholders and to document and communicate policies, procedures, and workflows.
• Ability to step into conflict and create resolution, and to seek out root cause and direct mitigation.
• Must be bondable. Subject to background and credit screening consistent with a position holding funds-movement and exception authority.

Physical Requirements/Work Environment

• Ability to work extended hours during month-end and investor reporting cycles, audits and examinations, system conversions, and disaster response, which may include evenings or weekends.
• Primarily office based, requiring extended periods of sitting and computer use, and frequent use of hands and fingers for typing, data entry, and document handling. 
• Visual acuity for reviewing documents, spreadsheets, and digital systems. 
• Ability to communicate clearly in person, by phone, and virtually. 
• Occasional lifting or carrying of office materials or files, up to 20 lbs. 
• Use of standard office equipment, with some exposure to moderate noise typical of a shared office environment.
• Occasional travel between Credit Union locations and to industry, investor, or vendor meetings.