Quatrro buys US mortgage co

NEW DELHI: Raman Roy promoted Quatrro BPO Solutions on Tuesday announced the buyout of mortgage operations of US-based Preferred Financial Group Inc for an undisclosed amount. The deal is pegged to be under $15 million though Mr Roy declined to comment on it.

Using this acquisition, Quatrro plans to provide end-to-end fulfillment services to US mortgage lenders across US.

Quatrro founder and CMD Raman Roy told ET: “This is one of the first experiments in India’s BPO history where we will have almost 33% of the operations offshore. No other BPO in India has done that before.”

The acquisition enhances Quatrro’s capability of end-to-end processing of high volume of mortgage loans using an onshore-offshore model. It allows Quatrro to provide loan processing and origination at a price-point projected to be 30-50% lower than current processing costs in the US.

This is the Quatrro’s fifth investment in the last 12-18 months. Others include a 40% stake in Annik Technologies, 22% in Auxicogent, the BPO division of John Keells (a shipping and port company), Flextronics BPO arm and a stake in Chennai-based Scope eKnowledge. Quatrro has operations spanning Delhi, Gurgaon, Colombo, Singapore and the US.

Quatrro’s largest facility at Gurgaon, which houses 1,700 seats, is spread over 130,000 sq ft. This will staff about 2,200 professionals. “A significant portion of the $300 million resource pool is still left unused. We are scouting for more buyouts,” Mr Roy added.

Olympus Capital has invested about $100 million in the company and some other PE players have also invested in the company.

“We will be working at significantly higher margins with almost one third of our workforce in US. The US mortgage market is over a $1trillion annually. We will be happy even if we get a fraction of it. With the US-subprime mortgage industry under losses, more business is bound to come,” he added.

Preferred Financial Group, Inc. (PFG) is a privately-held financial services corporation that originates, underwrites and funds mortgage products.

Currently Quatrro’s solutions encompass healthcare, technical support, banking, finance and accounting, market research and technical solutions, in addition to the mortgage arena. The buyout is projected to enhance Quatrro’s revenues from mortgage space.