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Founded in 1985, Univest has a rich heritage and successful
track record that serves as the foundation of our current success. Our
investment approach today leverages our understanding of asset valuation
and value creation that has been developed over the last 20 years.
1985:
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UNIVEST’S
BEGINNINGS
Univest has a rich heritage and successful track record
that serves as the foundation of our current success.
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While serving as the chief whole loan trader for E.F. Hutton Mortgage
Corporation, Ric Tomlinson leads a group of EF Hutton employees to execute
a management buyout of Hutton's mortgage business to form Univest Financial
Group, Inc.
When E.F. Hutton and Co. merged with Shearson Lehman
to form Shearson Lehman Hutton, the company decided
to move its mortgage banking operation
to New York’s Wall Street. Ric Tomlinson, then a senior officer
of the mortgage and thrift division for E.F. Hutton, felt that such a
move would not be in the best interest of Hutton’s mortgage banking
division located, at that time, in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Hutton was positioned at the forefront of MBS development. Surprisingly,
Tomlinson decided not to move with the newly merged company, knowing
his entrepreneurial desires were calling him to aquire and grow Hutton's
mortgage finance operation.
“
I thought about it," said Tomlinson, "and the
more I thought, the more I decided against New York,
and for the purchase of Hutton's mortgage finance operations
in Little Rock.”
In Little Rock, Tomlinson, two of his colleagues and
an investor group purchased E.F. Hutton Mortgage Corp.
and formed a mortgage finance investment
and consulting company, and called it Univest Financial Group, Inc.
By acquiring the physical assets of E.F. Hutton’s mortgage corporation,
Univest assumed the “back office” operations of its mortgage
banking division. In the first six months of Univest’s start-up
period, the company obtained a $50 million warehouse line of credit
from Chemical Bank of New York. Univest continued to purchase whole
loans
as principal as well as using various exit strategies such as repackaging
and securitization.
1985:
 Univest creates proprietary, cutting-edge pricing models providing clients
with a sound quantitative methodology to profile risk and value non-standard
mortgage portfolios, particularly those with diverse adjustable rate
features.
Univest created methodologies for evaluating adjustable rate loans, performing
sophisticated bulk mortgage loan mark-to-market valuations and detailed
due diligence systems. These methodologies would allow for efficient
gathering and collection of vital secondary market-required data. This
data defined the marketplace by using a software technology that mainstreamed
future mortgage banking, secondary market transaction criteria, and included
the secondary market quasi-governmental agencies of "Freddie Mac" and "Fannie
Mae", as well as the FSLIC and the RTC.
The system was known as the Mortgage Portfolio Analysis System (MORPAS),
and with this technology, Univest was able to audit, analyze and evaluate
residential and commercial portfolios and structure secondary market
transactions.
MORPAS was recognized as the most advanced system in the mortgage industry
at the time. It was utilized for portfolio liquidations, mergers and
acquisitions, asset restructures, whole loan sales, securitizations,
structured financing and other evolving industry activities.
With this technology, Univest’s solutions enabled clients to insure
the accurate completion of asset records and the subsequent curing of
those records. Univest’s solutions proved to be a more effective
and less expensive alternative to then current industry standards for
risk assessment and valuation standards.
Such technology and forethought allowed client companies to operate with
decisiveness and confidence in resolving issues of quality measurement,
cost efficiencies, pricing evaluations and risk management. Univest created
these methodologies for collecting and transcribing large volumes of
previously non-computerized yet highly specialized data at the client
source.
Based on this business concept for driving transactions, Univest pioneered
the idea that a successful transaction must reflect the proper relationship
of the quality of the product with the market-derived pricing.
1986 - 1987:
Univest mortgage specialists’ consummate over one hundred individual
transactions for financial companies, thrifts, mortgage originators and
its own account.
Univest’s mortgage pricing models facilitated these transactions
which provided clients with a sound quantitative methodology to profile
risk and value non-standard mortgage portfolios, particularly those with
diverse adjustable rate features.
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