MidFirst adds jobs after mortgage buy
Company says positions needed to handle 65,000 government-backed loans

BY DON MECOY
Published: October 8, 2008

MidFirst Bank plans to add 70 employees related to its purchase of a $6.5 billion mortgage servicing portfolio, the Oklahoma City company said Tuesday.

The portfolio is composed of more than 65,000 government-backed mortgage loans. The acquisition makes MidFirst one of the five largest U.S. servicers of FHA and VA government-backed loans, the company said.

70 positions coming
The 70 new positions, which will include a variety of loan servicing functions, will bring MidFirst’s servicing group to nearly 500 employees, the company said.
Chief Executive Officer Bob Dilg said MidFirst’s financial strength has allowed the bank "to pursue multiple opportunities.” MidFirst is pursuing other acquisitions that fit the company’s strategy, Dilg said in a statement.

Over the past year, MidFirst has bought government-backed FHA and VA servicing portfolios totaling nearly $16 billion. MidFirst’s government servicing portfolio includes 372,000 loans totaling $29.3 billion.

"For the past 20 years, the bank’s focus on this government-backed mortgage servicing strategy and our avoidance of the sub-prime mortgage business has significantly mitigated the impact to MidFirst of the recent financial turmoil, which continues to affect our economy,” Dilg said.

Maybe some companies, like MidFirst, can actually benefit from the mortgage/financial crisis. Always good to see more jobs added, maybe they'll add even more and decide to build a new tower downtown. :)

Are they really still fitting all their employees into that small headquarters building on I-44?

Maybe some companies, like MidFirst, can actually benefit from the mortgage/financial crisis. Always good to see more jobs added, maybe they'll add even more and decide to build a new tower downtown. :)

Or fill up the space to be left vacant in the old Devon tower.

Isn't their loan processing center down on I-40 near Meridian?

The building you're referring to used to house our mortgage operation. MidFirst owns both The MidFirst Plaza and Three Grand Park, located a few buildings to the west. The banking center located at Grand and Western is a retail banking location only.

The building you're referring to used to house our mortgage operation. MidFirst owns both The MidFirst Plaza and Three Grand Park, located a few buildings to the west. The banking center located at Grand and Western is a retail banking location only.

MidFirst/Midland Mortgage never officed in the Devon Tower. We owned the Midland Center (the OLD Kerr-McGee building) on Kerr & Robinson.

MidFirst also has a loan center on Hefner and Rockwell in the old Food Lion building...I believe many of the new hires will be located there

So they could definitely consolidate.

So they could definitely consolidate.

We can only hope. It would be pretty amazing to have two new towers going up at the same time.

In the 80's, their HQ was downtown, although they leased I believe.

Yeah Teri said above that they used to be in what is now the Dowell Center, I guess. I never knew that.

I remember they were there because a good friend was an assistant to Jeff Record. They were downtown for quite a while...

They probably moved when downtown really started to go dark in the late 80's or early 90's and they had the opportunity to buy those suburban buildings on the cheap.

With Record's ownership interest in the Thunder, I'd hope he'd want to make further investments in downtown OKC.