Sareb outsources management of a portfolio of 42,900 assets to Solvia
Sareb awards the management of a portfolio comprised of 42,900 assets to Solvia. The agreement will come in to force in January 2015 and will have a term of seven years.
Today’s allocation is the first of the portfolios that Sareb will award as part of Project Ibero. The process was launched a few months ago in order to select the servicers that will manage Sareb’s portfolio from 31 December 2014 onwards, date in which the current contracts will expire.
The portfolio awarded to the real estate company Solvia is comprised of properties from Bankia, as well as loans and properties acquired from Banco Gallego and Banco Ceiss. The assets were valued at €7 billion when they were transferred to Sareb, in line with the methodology established by the Bank of Spain and are primarily located in Madrid, Comunidad Valenciana, Catalonia, Castilla-Leon and Galicia.
In selecting Solvia’s proposal, Sareb took in to consideration a wide range of criteria, which were primarily related to its business operations and its technological capabilities. Sareb particularly valued the company’s track-record in migrating real estate portfolios, which will guarantee that the planning and migration of Sareb’s assets will be carried out with the utmost professionalism.
Another factor taken in to consideration was its past performance as a Sareb asset servicer, given that Solvia currently manages and markets Banco Gallego’s portfolio. Other aspects that were defining factors in the selection of Solvia was the quality of its IT platform, the teams that will be dedicated to this project, its geographical coverage and its sales marketing plans.
Process overseen by an independent auditor
The selection process was carried out in accordance with Sareb’s best practice guidelines, in terms of transparency, competition and management of conflicts of interest and was overseen by an independent auditor that ensured that all of the stages of the process were meticulously carried out and pursuant to best market practices.
Sareb’s president, Belén Romana, stated that, “the management of these assets is the largest outsourcing agreement that the company will ever carry out, hence it is logical that we apply the most exacting of regulations in terms of competition and transparency. The need to have the company up and running as fast as possible meant that the initial servicing of the assets was allocated to the contributing banks by the government, but now that these contracts are coming to an end, now is the ideal moment to professionalise the management of our assets”.
Sareb’s CEO, Jaime Echegoyen, highlighted that “there was a great deal of interest in the tender, which allowed it to be extremely competitive at all stages of the process”. He explained that Project Ibero “fits with the company’s strategic plan for the upcoming years of adding value to its portfolio. Contracting efficient servicers will help Sareb to manage and sell its assets in the best and most profitable way possible”.
A portfolio with a large number of real estate assets
The portfolio awarded to Solvia comprises a large number of real estate assets. Of the almost 43,000 assets in the portfolio, more than 33,000 are properties, with the remainder being loans and credits with some form of real estate collateral. The properties are all concentrated in Catalonia, Comunidad Valenciana, Andalusia and Madrid, which are areas that Bankia operates in, which was the largest contributor to this portfolio.
In terms of financial assets, the portfolio awarded to Solvia comprises loans and credits from Banco CEISS and Banco Gallego, which makes the geographical distribution of the assets slightly different, as they are all concentrated in Castilla-Leon, Galicia and Madrid.
New allocations
In carrying out the Ibero tendering process, Sareb is looking to improve the quality and efficiency of how its assets are managed, taking advantage of the new professional and specialist third-party servicers that have come on to the market. A large number of the banks that contributed assets to Sareb have stopped providing this service or have sold their own real estate platforms to new market players.
Once this portfolio has been fully allocated, Sareb will continue to study the offers presented for the other portfolios pending allocation. These include the financial and real estate assets contributed by Liberbank, Novagalicia Banco, BMN, Catalunya Bank, Caja 3 and Banco de Valencia, as well as the loans generated by Bankia.
