* Bank may revise processes, leading to higher costs
* Shares up 3.1 percent (Adds byline, details on foreclosure case refilings; rewrites paragraphs 1-4; updates share price)
By Joe Rauch
CHARLOTTE, N.C., Feb 25 (Reuters) – SunTrust Banks Inc (STI.N) is refiling documents in 4,000 foreclosure cases after an internal review found problems with the bank’s home repossessions.
The Atlanta-based bank said in its 2010 annual report filed with U.S. securities regulators on Friday that some foreclosure affidavits were signed by employees who did not directly review documents to ensure accuracy and instead relied on the work of others.
SunTrust said it is refiling the documents and expects to have the process substantially completed by the end of first quarter 2011.
The process, dubbed “robo-signing” by critics, forced some of the largest U.S. mortgage lenders to halt foreclosures last Fall amid a firestorm of public criticism.
Testimony of Harold Lewis
Managing Director, CitiMortgage
Before the Committee on Financial Services
Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity
November 18, 2010
Excerpt:
As an additional quality control measure, Citi is currently reviewing approximately 10,000 affidavits that were executed in pending judicial foreclosures initiated prior to February 2010 to assure that these affidavits are substantively correct and properly executed. Citi expects that affidavits executed prior to the fall of 2009 will need to be re-filed.
Separately, Citi is also reviewing approximately 4,000 pending foreclosure affidavits in judicial states that were executed at our Dallas processing center and may not have been signed in the presence of a notary, to assure that these affidavits are substantively correct and properly executed. Citi expects that it will re-file these affidavits.
Lastly, as previously announced, Citi stopped referring new matters to the Florida law firm David Stern in September of 2010 and has since withdrawn all pending matters from that firm. As an added precaution and quality-control measure, Citi is transferring approximately 8,500 pending foreclosure files from the Stern law firm to new counsel. New affidavits for these cases will be prepared and re-filed by new counsel under Citi’s current procedures.
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