iGate signs $20 million deal with US mortgage firm

BANGALORE: It''s time for Infosys to sit up and watch out.
iGate Global Solutions, headed by Phaneesh Murthy (former Infosys head of international marketing) has bagged a $20 million contract from Green Point, one of the top five mortage firms in the US, the same firm where he had signed a contract with Infosys (Progeon) for loan servicing in April 2002.
Green Point, a $22 billion asset bank holding company, is among the most profitable of the 50 largest banking companies in the US and until now it was only to Progeon that work was outsourced to.
Making this announcement on Monday, Phaneesh Murthy, CEO, iGate Global, said his company will work on an integrated operations and technology model where credit decisions would be taken by the company here.
"We will be hiring about 150-200 people including Ph.Ds and MBAs to work on this project where we will be using high end analytical technology to slice, dice and analyse the mortgage firms customers for refinancing and mortgage credit," he stated
A profile of each customer would be created and the buying pattern would be formed by the team here. Based on this, credit decisions would be taken by Green Point.
The contract which is based on a transaction pricing model is the first of its kind for iGate which calls itself a first fully integrated technology and operations firm with a global services model.
According to him, iGate will be doing the high end transaction work for Greenpoint which would mean higher value add and higher margins when compared to the credit services portion which Infosys is working for.
When queried as to whether iGate would also bid for the loan services segment later, he smiled and said that everything boils down to business."If Green Point finds out there would be higher value from us, we cannot refuse them," he added.