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Hosted by Europe’s leading servicing expert, Toni Moss, EuropeServicing 2006 drew more than 200 people from across Europe and the United States to London to hear key industry leaders and decisionmakers discuss their views on the  current state and future of CMBS, RMBS and covered-bond servicing, processing and administration in Europe.

EuropeServicing 2006 included  two days of compelling content, separating commercial real estate from residential mortgage lending into a full day on each sector. Because the event was held at 195 Piccadilly, the home of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), Moss, as the event’s chief architect, chose to use movie titles to theme each session. While some see films as entertainment, others recognise the art of cinema as a record of the human condition. Moss chose titles and short clips of films to theme and inspire discussion as she brought the triumph and struggles of the European servicing sector to life over the course of the event. Day One (CMBS) was subtitled “The World is Not Enough”, while Residential discussions on Day 2 was themed “Tomorrow Never Dies”.

Throughout the two-day programme, three key concepts made their way into each session:

1.  Although housing and real estate are fundamentally local activities, their funding is increasingly global. Despite natural differences among national markets (and indeed even among different states in the US), mortgage markets vary in form – but not function. When looking at a wider picture of the mortgage and real estate value chain, servicing is the bridge between primary and secondary markets. The best way to understand how mortgage markets really work – and to make them more efficient – is to view that value chain from the servicing perspective.

2.  The key drivers for cross-border lending in Europe are securitisation, the ability to share risk and the ability to outsource servicing to third parties. Both securitisation and mortgage insurance/monoline schemes are advancing much faster than third-party servicing. There must be more efforts, initiatives and assistance – beyond the pioneering firms themselves – toward developing the third-party sector.

3. The loan-level and portfolio-wide information that servicers manage is the ultimate currency of the mortgage and real estate industry. As such, servicers are the repository of that information. The perception of servicing must change from the outdated view of it as the “originator’s back office” to a more accurate one of servicing as the shareholder and investor’s front office.