1. Describe and evaluate New Century’s business model?
New Century Financial Corporation, headed by founders Brad Morrice, Edward Gotschall, and
Robert, was a firm which specialized in subprime mortgages. The company originated, sold, and
serviced subprime home mortgage loans. New Century was structured as a real estate investment
trust (REIT) and was composed of two operating divisions. The Wholesale Loan Division,
known as New Century Mortgage Corporation, comprised 85% of the firm’s loan originations,
while the Retail Mortgage Loan Division operated under Home123 Corporation.
New Century Mortgage Corporation operated in 33 locations throughout 19 different states …show more content…
Additionally, the methodology used
for the allowance for loan losses (ALL) was known by management to be defective as the
company’s models used poor predictors of future performance to determine the level of reserve
needed. In calculating the repurchase reserve, New Century obtained historic averages and
applied those percentages to loans sold in the last three months as EPD was defined as payment
default occurring in the first three payments. However, since the repurchases were being
processed by several different departments within the company depending on the cause of the
repurchase, there was a backlog in obtaining the data in a timely manner. As loan repurchases
became more frequent, the company continued using stale data causing the reserve calculation to
In addition, the company was not properly applying LCM valuation as stated in its own
company policy. Instead of pooling similar loans to determine to conduct LCM analysis, the firm
was performing the analysis on the disaggregated loans and then grouping the loans together
to conduct valuation on the group as a whole. This method resulted in gains from one loan
group offsetting the losses in another causing the LCM valuation to be significantly flawed.
The residual interest valuation methods used were also flawed as the company was using
discount rates which were lower