History of MISC

Jim Holtgraves

Steve Chase

Mortgage Investment Services Corporation (“MISC”) is an independent mortgage banking company that provides home loan services solely and exclusively for the customers of 200+ financial institutions, mainly in under-served rural communities in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, & Nebraska.

MISC’s founders, Jim Holtgraves and Steve Chase, have been active in mortgage banking and community banking in the Midwest for more than three decades. They started MISC in July, 2000 with a unique business model designed to reduce and avoid the most severe risks of loss in mortgage lending: Fraud, misrepresentation and borrower abuse.

Financial Institutions have long term, trusted adviser relationships with their customers. The face-to-face home loan application process between the financial institution loan officer and the customer is a very important component of risk mitigation. The customer does not want to harm their reputation in the community by lying to the loan officer, or defaulting on the loan, if they can possibly avoid it, after the: loan is closed. Financial Institution loan officers are usually salaried rather than commissioned, and therefore are unlikely to misrepresent the customer’s situation or push the customer into a loan program that is unsuitable.

This unique home lending model produces high quality, high performing, low default incidence home loans. The resulting mortgage servicing asset derived from these loans is also high quality. There are no other mortgage lenders in MISC’s territory that exclusively use this business model.

In MISC’s model, the correspondent financial institution is accountable to MISC for the actions of its employees. And MISC is accountable to the bank and its customers for the services it provides. The two-way loan performance feedback chain is very short. MISC’s conservative reputation with its mortgage investors is sound. MISC has had almost zero expenses due to repurchases, fines, penalties and litigation in its 20 years. A conservative example of controlled risk mortgage lending.

MISC focuses its attention on serving financial institutions and their customers in rural towns and cities in the Midwest, the geographic segment it knows very well from 30 years of lending in these communities. These towns are largely overlooked by the large banks. Affordable home loans are a critical need of first time home-buyers and homeowners in these communities. The financial institution earns CRA credit for helping to provide home loans in their community.