First American Creates Two New Business Line Solutions

November 17, 2008

SANTA ANA, Calif., -- The First American Corporation announced the creation of two new business lines: Valuations and Property Solutions, and Outsourcing and Technology Solutions. "The business lines are designed to deliver a full range of integrated services to our clients and to further improve operational efficiency," said Barry M. Sando, president of the Information and Outsourcing Solutions segment, where both new business lines reside. "We see them as prototypes for how the new Information Solutions company will be structured when it eventually becomes a separate publicly traded company."

Valuation and Property Solutions includes First American eAppraiseIT, a leading appraisal management companies; First American Residential Value View, a leader in broker price opinions (BPOs); and First American Field Services, a comprehensive provider of residential property inspections and preservation services. Joni Pierce, chief operating officer of First American Residential Value View, has been named leader of the business line.

"We are moving toward a single platform that will allow clients to automatically match the appropriate valuation product -- full appraisal, desk- review, BPO or specialty automated valuation model (AVM) -- to specific product risk, using cascading logic," said Pierce. "From an operational perspective, we will be able to share technology and best practices to better select and manage the independent appraisers, Realtors® and field service providers who generate valuations and property information."

Outsourcing and Technology Solutions includes First American's National Default Outsourcing, National Claims Outsourcing, Loss Mitigation Services, Default Technologies, Loan Production Solutions, REO Servicing and Global Offshore Services. Scott Brinkley, executive vice president of Global Offshore Services, has been named leader of this new business line.

"By consolidating all of First American's outsourcing solutions into one operating vertical, we are better positioned to provide seamless, end-to-end outsourcing solutions to our clients," said Brinkley. "The establishment of this new business line allows to take full advantage of our experience, scale and resources to deliver high-impact business process outsourcing and technology solutions to the financial services and mortgage industries."

"This past January, we announced plans to split First American into two separately listed public companies: the Information Solutions company and the Financial Services company," said Frank McMahon, vice chairman of First American, who will become chief executive officer of the new Information Solutions company. "Although the timing of that plan has been delayed due to market turbulence, we are still aggressively working to integrate our product companies and transform our organization. As the creation of these new business lines demonstrates, we are committed to being a client-focused business partner, integrating business units, and leveraging our data, analytics and processing to enable our clients to improve performance and manage risk."

Source: First American


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