Mortgage servicer Ocwen to cut U.S. workforce by 10 percent

(Reuters) - Mortgage servicer Ocwen Financial Corp said it would cut 300 jobs, about 10 percent of its U.S. workforce, in Waterloo, Iowa to save costs.

The company has been slimming down its operations since regulators questioned its servicing standards last year. Ocwen has sold more than $90 billion of servicing rights since February.

Mortgage servicers such as Ocwen had grown exponentially since the financial crisis by buying up the rights to service mortgages after new capital regulations made the business too costly for banks to maintain.

But, investments in systems and procedures did not keep pace with their expansion. Ocwen has posted lower profit in the last two quarters and losses in the two quarters before that.

Ocwen will continue to operate in Waterloo and plans to lease about half of its facility in the city, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

The company had about 11,400 employees in total as of Dec. 31, according to an annual filing.

Ocwen shares were up by 2 percent at $7.01 in midday trading. They had fallen about 55 percent this year through Wednesday's close.

(Reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Savio D'Souza)