Commonwealth USA Settlements Adds to Exec Team
October 11, 2016
Commonwealth USA Settlements LLC (CWUSA) has appointed Tom Frunzi as executive vice president of corporate development.
In his role, Frunzi will grow new business and support existing client relationships. He will also be responsible for introducing the company’s UNITE service to the market. UNITE – a unique partnership vehicle, was developed to assist smaller settlement services firms struggling with the cost of growing lender and investor demands, such as third-party certification services (including ALTA Best Practices or even SOC 2, Type 2 verification).
With UNITE, CWUSA would serve as the primary contact for lenders demanding such prerequisites before awarding business. While CWUSA’s UNITE partner or partners would continue to manage lower-risk services, CWUSA would oversee the remaining tasks. UNITE would empower those smaller firms to control their own costs and prices without having to undertake costly certification procedures, eliminating the difficult decision between bearing crippling costs or losing entire portfolios, the company said in a release.
“Instead of facing the choice of taking on crippling expenses to prove their levels of compliance or losing significant lender business to other firms able to afford expensive vetting and certification processes; smaller agencies and settlement firms would be able to maintain much of their existing business without crushing expenses, while Commonwealth would take on the higher-risk tasks,” said Frunzi of UNITE.
Frunzi comes to with 32 years in the settlement services and mortgage lending industry. He was most recently senior vice president of business development with PCN/Safe Escrow LLC in Pittsburgh. He has also served in the role of chief marketing officer a settlement services agency, executive vice president with ValuAmerica and senior vide president for over 17 years with Lender’s Service Inc. During the course of his career, he also founded and built the Phenix Group, a successful, financial services-oriented consultancy.
“UNITE is unlike any other vehicle designed to help smaller settlement services firms to survive spiraling costs without surrendering their autonomy to a merger or acquisition,” said Shanon Lake-Catello, chief technology officer of CWUSA. “Executives throughout the lending industry know and respect Tom, who has built a reputation for getting to the heart of the value proposition and how it applies to his clients. That makes him the ideal choice to help us grow understanding of what UNITE can really do for them.”
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