Hilltop Advisors, LLC and affiliates – CEO, June 2005 to Present
BearingPoint, Inc. – Managing Director, February 2001 to June 2005
KPMG, LLP – Accounting and Audit Partner, December 1976 to February 2001
Jeff is a nationally recognized expert on real estate finance (residential and commercial). He has obtained the Certified Mortgage Banker (CMB) designation in recognition of such. His strategic view and “practical solutions” for the real estate finance and mortgage capital markets arena have earned him a reputation as one of the leading industry professionals. Many of the industry’s leading companies have utilized Jeff’s financial, operational, technology and risk management skills to achieve their strategic objectives. Specifically, Jeff blends his functional skills (accounting, auditing, financial advisory, risk management) with his significant industry experience (real estate finance, real estate, consumer lending, commercial lending, banking, fixed income markets, securitization and syndication) to deliver consistent high quality recommendations to the senior management of his clients. Jeff has been very successful at identifying opportunities to enhance operational efficiency and improve the “bottom line”.
After serving in many leadership roles (Mortgage and Structured Finance practices, Consumer Lending practice and the Homebuilder practice and Freddie Mac client team for KPMG and BearingPoint) during his 28-year tenure with KPMG LLP and BearingPoint, Inc., Jeff formed Hilltop Advisors, LLC in June 2005. Hilltop Advisors, LLC focuses exclusively on providing consulting and accounting/audit advisory services to clients in the Financial Services, Federal finance sector agencies (involved in lending, mortgage insurance, loan guarantees, securitizing loans and regulating the financial services industry) and Real Estate industries.
Jeff has led Hilltop Advisors, LLC into client engagements (for Banks, Credit Unions, Insurance companies, Mortgage bankers, Loan servicers, Consumer credit providers, GSEs, applicable Federal agencies, real estate and many other financial services related entities) involving the following areas:
- Lending and Loan Servicing operational efficiency, business process improvement, benchmarking, cost take-out and change management,
- Credit Risk policy, financial and operational controls, independent loan reviews for commercial, multifamily, mortgage and other loan types (for credit and/or compliance purposes), ALLL or reserve assessments, etc.,
- Capital Market Transactions, Securitization, Derivatives related to loan transactions, MBS/CMBS/ABS transactions, securitization diligence/disclosures/cashflow modeling/valuation, derivatives created to hedge various interest rate and credit risks,
- Real Estate involving finance, accounting, property management assessments, technology selection/implementation, lease calculations, etc.,
- Finance, Accounting and Audit advisory including accounting policies, audit readiness and auditor issues, financial restatement, technical issues, financial systems, reporting, CFO/Controller support, etc.
- Financial Crimes, Fraud and Forensics investigations, damage estimates, vulnerability assessments, controls design/implementation/testing, etc.
- Risk Management
- Regulatory Compliance independent assessments, mock compliance audits and remediation assistance and client responses to MOUs/MRAs/Consent Orders, etc. for all types of financial services entities,
- IT & Data controls assessments, business requirements for new systems, data integrity and governance, data security and privacy compliance,
- Financial Advisory assistance to potential buyers/sellers of companies, mortgage or asset backed securities, loans, etc., due diligence, merger integration assistance, asset valuation, calculations of purchase prices and “earn-outs”, etc.
- Litigation support and Expert testimony for industry subject matter topics, damage calculations and accounting/audit issues related to client litigation.
Lending, Credit Risk and Loan Servicing Experience
Jeff has significant engagement experience with all types of financial services and real estate companies in many facets of their financial, credit, risk, investment and compliance aspects of their business. The credit cycle (origination, sales/securitization/portfolio investments, and loan servicing) has been where a majority of Jeff’s engagements have occurred. He has led engagements including, but not limited to, the following:
Credit Risk Policy and Processes:
- Credit risk policy design, implementation, compliance testing, etc.
- Loan review for all types of loans for compliance and loan ratings, (over 300 engagements),
- Allowance for loan/lease losses (ALLL) analysis, recalculation and comparison to policy
- Loan repurchase, indemnification, rep and warranty breach risk and calculating related loss reserves,
- Mortgage underwriting policy design, implementation, compliance testing,
- Performing investor requirements comparison to internal policies, and
- Assessing overall processes and technology used to control credit risks.
Lending Operations:
- Loan origination strategy, product and channel analysis,
- Loan origination systems requirements analysis, selection and implementation,
- Cycle time, handoffs, “touches” efficiency assessments,
- PerforMetrics© benchmarking financial and operating metrics,
- QC assessments to determine effectiveness and cost,
- Loan origination process redesign and improvement, and
- Credit and Lending management performance assessments.
Secondary Marketing and Securitization:
- Sales/Interest Rate risk policy design/implementation/testing,
- Hedge and Pipeline (pricing, lock-ins, delivery) risk management and effectiveness and assessing tools and technology utilized,
- Investor or securitization requirements compliance assessments,
- PerforMetrics© benchmarking financial and operating metrics,
- Securitization “waterfall modeling”, tie-out and document review,
- Securitization disclosure compliance assessments – Reg AB etc.
- Loan level analytics to assess quality, accuracy and completeness of disclosures,
- Valuation of loans, loan portfolios, securities, etc.
- Sales accounting assessments, and
- Gain/loss on sale calculations and accounting.
Loan Servicing, Loss Mitigation and Default Management:
- Review processes, policies and procedures effectiveness for overall servicing business components (including loan set-up, cashiering (lockbox ops and payment application) and investor reporting, escrows, call center, collections, loss mitigation, foreclosure, bankruptcy, REO),
- Review of short sale, deed in lieu or other foreclosure alternatives and calculating NPVs and loss estimates,
- Review the delinquency reporting completeness, accuracy and trend analyses,
- Review custodial accounts (principal, interest, taxes and insurance) bank account reconciliations for timely preparation and resolution of reconciling items,
- Provide reconciliation assistance in investor reporting and accounting,
- Servicing QC independent assessment,
- Review calculation/accounting/reconciliation/recovery of servicing advances (P&I, T&I, Replacement Reserves, foreclosure costs, etc),
- Loan servicing system assessments – business requirements, vendor selection, implementation assistance and testing,
- PerforMetrics© benchmarking financial and operating metrics,
- Assessing loan servicing platforms as acquisition targets, and
- Servicing management performance assessment.
Hilltop’s senior team has been involved in over 100 business process improvement and redesign engagements for clients of all sizes. Jeff has led the creation of PerforMetrics© which is Hilltop’s performance measurement process that identifies operational and financial metrics for lending and loan servicing operations which need improvement. PerforMetrics is focused on achieving operational enhancements (reduce steps and handoffs, automate processes) and identify cost reductions (including regulatory compliance costs).
Jeff has both large and small financial services and real estate clients in the Commercial, Multifamily, SBA, Residential, Education, Consumer and other lending and loan servicing businesses. He has worked extensively with the GSEs (Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae), Ginnie Mae, FHA, etc. His experience spans different lending markets (including the global markets – Europe, Middle East, Asia, South America, Canada, and Mexico). He has led major engagements with many of the top commercial and residential real estate companies, including JMB Realty, Trammel Crow, NHP, Winthrop, Grubb & Ellis, CB Commercial, Cushman & Wakefield, NVR, Ryan Homes, Lennar, US Homes, Pulte, Del Webb, etc. Jeff has also worked with many real estate and mortgage REITs on various accounting, operations and structure issues.
Capital Market Transactions, Securitization, Derivatives Experience
Jeff Oliver has been involved in the secondary market aspects of the mortgage and asset-backed capital markets since the start of his career, including being KPMG’s Lead Partner for the Structured Finance National Practice which handled all asset securitization transactions and asset valuations (for clients that included Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, CitiMortgage, etc). He has significant knowledge of the fixed income markets, financial instruments, hedging techniques (including the derivatives used), and the establishment and ongoing monitoring of the appropriate risk management processes. He has worked extensively with whole loan markets, the pass-through and participation markets and the securitized asset markets MBS, ABS, CMBS, CDO/CLOs and resulting tranche structures. He has helped clients assess their securitization investments, tools/technologies and servicing/reporting for securitized instruments. Hilltop is currently performing REMIC modeling for MBS waterfall cashflows to tie out disclosures in various offering documents. Jeff has been involved in many assessments of securitized transactions to determine the economics, cashflows, valuation and appropriate accounting for such transactions. Jeff and many of the Hilltop senior management members have been involved in both sales of whole loans and securities.
Real Estate Experience
Hilltop and Meany & Oliver are teaming partners on many of the real estate consulting projects to deliver the following types of services:
- Needs analysis for current and future real estate requirements,
- Asset and portfolio management analyses and reporting,
- Asset and portfolio accounting,
- Partnership accounting and reporting,
- Portfolio acquisitions and divestitures due diligence, valuation, accounting, etc.,
- CMBS securitization process, diligence and modeling,
- Contractor compliance and construction audits,
- Pass through expense audits
- Comparative lease scenario analysis,
- Comparative lease/own analysis,
- Econometrics and submarket research,
- Partnership tax returns and K-1 preparation,
- Real estate software requirements and implementation
- Perform projections/reforecasts
- Construction/development budgets
- Construction draws/pay process and controls
Finance, Accounting and Auditing
Jeff Oliver was a senior partner position in the Financial Services Accounting/Audit practice of KPMG. He has led over 500+ audits, 250+ fraud and forensic engagements and 750+ compliance audits. He has extensive audit experience with audits of banks, credit unions, insurers, lenders, mortgage bankers, REITs, real estate companies, and loan servicers, as well as, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, FHA, and FDIC. Jeff was either the lead or second reviewer on all of KPMG’s largest lender/servicer client audits.
Jeff is an active CPA helping clients with accounting technical matters, financial and management reporting, audit readiness, resolving issues that arise from the audit, accounting systems, compliance audits and fraud investigations and controls assessments. Jeff’s specific expertise is credit risk assessment using loan portfolio analysis tools to help determine how the credit performance impacts the allowance for losses on loans, leases and other credit instruments. Hilltop is working with its clients to prepare for the new Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) accounting for such credit losses that is effective in 2020 for SEC companies and 2021 for all others. Hilltop Accounting is an active/licensed accounting firm that provides accounting advisory, audit readiness, audit resolution, compliance audits, fraud and forensics, financial systems selection/implementation and CFO/Controller support for clients in all industries.
Being an accountant, Jeff has developed several benchmarking processes that identify and measure a company’s key operating metrics. Such tools have helped Hilltop (PerforMetrics) and KPMG (MorPro and MorServ) to help financial services (specifically lending and loan servicing) clients identify operational inefficiency and financial performance issues (high costs, high risks, insufficient revenues, etc.).
Financial Crimes, Fraud and Forensics
Jeff has been involved in numerous engagements for financial services companies and many other industries subject to financial crime/fraud risk. Specifically, Jeff has led teams to investigate and analyze the following:
- fraud (Corporate, Customer, Employee and Financial),
- Personal identity information (PII or Secrecy issues):
- Investigating stolen personal identification,
- assessing information security and compliance
- money laundering,
- terrorist financing,
- market abuse and insider dealing,
- financial statement misrepresentation, and
- bribery and corruption.
Hilltop’s Financial Crimes practice let by Jeff Oliver and John Mendonca (two former KPMG audit partners) blends our various teams’ multidiscipline and industry skills. Our team has been engaged in the following:
- Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance and mitigating failures,
- Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) compliance and mitigating failures with respect to PII,
- Fraud risk vulnerability where we assess the fraud risks, the policies, procedures and controls in place to prevent, identify and mitigate fraud as follows:
- testing your controls and processes to identify financial crimes,
- testing the actual monitoring policies and processes,
- identifying new risks, changes in personnel, new business processes, etc. which require the monitoring efforts to be updated/changed,
- conducting “baited threats” to assess whether the monitoring and detection processes identify these “threats” and whether there is a capability to identify such as false or real threats,
- testing your Company’s risk quantification and damage impact capabilities,
- assessing Management’s response to a potential threat, and
- assessing Management’s response to a potential threat
- Fraud risk investigations where we assess whether a fraud or other financial crime did occur (most often involving cash or other assets misappropriated or embezzled), identify immediate defensive actions, identify how the fraud was perpetrated, quantify how much financial impact there was, establish remediation actions and recast the policies, procedures and controls to protect against future similar events,
- Identify and evaluate an intentional material misstatement of the financial statements (even if cash/assets was not taken),
- Identify and evaluate the impact of expense reimbursement “padding”,
- Identify and evaluate bonus calculation frauds,
- Identify the facts and circumstances that may have encouraged, aided or were critical to the crime’s success,
- Identifying all of the parties that may have “touched” the systems and/or data involved,
Risk Management Experience
Jeff has led over 500 risk assessments and remediation engagements involving the following risk areas:
- credit extension and monitoring,
- loan portfolio performance (analysis of loan loss provisioning, foreclosure and recourse risk loss analyses),
- Counterparty – who do you do business with?
- regulatory compliance,
- interest rate/hedging risk,
- operations (lending and loan servicing backlogs,
- data governance, data quality management and data security,
- EUC reliance and lack of system output controls,
- financial risk (ability to continue as a going concern),
- accounting irregularities (regular writeoffs, unreconciled accounts, key personnel turnover),
- fraud and financial crimes,
- liquidity issues, and
- IT general/application controls and CyberSecurity risks.
- Competition risk
- Management/succession
These engagements have involved risk vulnerability assessments, controls assessments, transaction review, assessment of possible issues (fraud, errors, management override, etc.), and assessment of why risks have grown/occurred, assessing management attitudes and response to such risks, best practices implementation, new technology to support risk management, etc. Jeff has also helped clients with the calculated financial damages, traced illicit funds (tracing wires, ACHs, and other money movements), reviewed AML and SSARs controls and processes to assess the severity of an actual or perceived risk/threat. Jeff is an AICPA Certified Financial Forensics (CFF) specialist and has helped reconstruct or reconcile major financial problems, including assessing the client’s financial data completeness, accuracy and security.
Regulatory Compliance
Jeff has been in the regulatory environment with his bank, credit union and mortgage clients for his entire career. Hilltop continues to do extensive work in the regulatory arena, especially providing “get ready mock audits”, remediation and response to regulator supervisory letters and consent orders. Jeff’s significant involvement with client’s regulatory efforts with CFPB, FDIC, OCC, NCUA, HUD, FHFA has helped him gain respect from the regulatory community. Regulatory Compliance engagements include:
- Performing mock Regulator compliance audits – all types,
- Assisting with design/implementation/testing of compliance policies,
- Assessing all Federal and State Bank and/or Mortgage regulations (Fair Lending, HMDA, TRID/RESPA, National Mortgage servicing standards, Fair Credit Reporting, Fair Debt Collection Practices, HAMP, HARP, CRA, Bank Secrecy Act, Anti-Money Laundering, etc.)
- Assessing investor compliance (GSEs, Banks, Trusts) for loan delivery and servicing (PSAs, GSEs, FHA, Ginnie Mae requirements),
IT & Data Controls, Governance, Data Integrity and Security
Technology and the handling of data has been a focus since Jeff’s early audit year. Hilltop helps clients and/or internal audit teams in assessing IT controls, where we use our Certified Information Systems Auditors and other IT certified reviewers to assess the general and application controls. With the advent of the Internet and significant “hacking” of IT systems and data – Jeff has focused significant attention to Data. Specifically, data governance, controls over accuracy and completeness, data definitions and usage of consistent terms and data security (Cyber) are all key areas of assessment, creating new policies, procedures, controls and performing remediation efforts to address client weaknesses that have been identified.
Financial Advisory, Mergers, Acquisitions, Transaction Management, Valuations
Jeff Oliver has led mergers and acquisition and financial advisory engagements for many of the Top 25 banks, mortgage entities, homebuilders and consumer finance companies. He has assisted sellers, buyers, and financiers of such transactions. Jeff has also led several financial advisory engagements involving the sale of approximately $100 billion of assets for HUD, Ginnie Mae, FDIC, and SBA. He led the “design, architecture and build” effort for an auction website/browser tool that has been used successfully in many asset dispositions. Jeff has led corporate and asset valuation efforts for many acquisitions and bank financing transactions, including loans, mortgage servicing assets and banks/mortgage banking enterprises. Engagements have also included helping the merged companies with integration of the two businesses’ people, policies, processes and technology. Jeff has been involved in the financial (forecasting, valuation, purchase price calculation including earn-outs, cashflows, etc.), operational and technology aspects of many acquisitions/mergers.
Litigation Support and Expert Testimony
Jeff has led numerous teams in assisting clients who require help with supporting their litigation efforts. Support includes gathering information, analyzing transactions, data and/or accounting records to provide conclusions, completing various analysis tasks that counsel had requested, identifying deposition questions for the opposing side, assessing the other expert’s findings and providing rebuttal information/comments, providing other knowledge/information that could be helpful to the client’s legal position. Jeff and other senior Hilltop management have also been Experts in various cases. Jeff has been an Expert on financial services industry related issues (regulatory compliance, valuation of assets or companies, purchase price calculations especially when “earn outs” are to be paid, fraudulent transactions, rep and warranty claims, PSAs (securitization agreements for servicing and cash payment and “trigger events”), “prudent or normal practices”, etc.).
Our supporting efforts for accounting and audit issues that may have been raised in litigation include performing independent testing to assess controls or financial data, performing forensic reproduction of financial or operational data, reviewing accounting entries made and comparing to source information, investigating fraudulent transactions, recalculating earn-out or other compensation components, testing compliance with agreements (vendor, construction, lease, etc.), etc. Jeff has also provided Expert opinions relating to accounting and auditing issues.
Jeff as supported by the Hilltop team has provide Expert testimony and overall support for the following lawsuits:
Case Law Firm and Engagement Year
Blackwater Security Burke PLLC represented Whistleblower 2010
Provided both accounting, payroll review. Expert Report. No deposition.
Assured v Deutche Patterson Belknap represented Assured-plaintiff 2014
Typical Industry practices relating to risk/controls. Expert Report. Deposed. Case settled.
MBIA v JPMC Patterson Belknap represented MBIA-plaintiff 2014
Typical Industry practices relating to risk/controls. No Report. Case settled.
Ambac v JPMC Patterson Belknap represented Ambac-plaintiff 2014
Typical Industry practices relating to risk/controls. No Report. Case settled.
Syncora v Deutche Patterson Belknap represented Ambac-plaintiff 2014
Typical Industry practices relating to risk/controls. Expert Report issued. Case settled.
Supreme V Cascade Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly represented Cascade-def. 2014
Damage estimate calculated. Expert report issued. No deposition. Case settled.
ACLU v Countrywide Lief, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein rep plaintiff 2015
Profit model built to determine “ill gotten gains”. Expert report issued. Case dismissed
USBank v Countrywide Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman – rep plaintiff 2014
Loan file review to assess breaches. No report filed. Client changed law firm.
Confidential DOJ investigation 2014-2017
Fraud, defendant’s accounting reviewed, auditor review.
Confidential Bondurant, Mixson, et al. – rep plaintiff 2016
Support only for Class Action suit involving servicing matters, Ginnie Mae regulations.
Lucidiom Inc Akerman et al – rep plaintiff creditors 2016
US Bankruptcy Court Eastern District – Review asset accounting. Expert report issued
Testimony in Federal Court in Alexandria, VA
Ocwen Financial Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP – rep plaintiff 2017
Shareholder lawsuit. Expert Report Issued and Deposed. Case settled.
Blackrock Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger & Grossman 2017-18
Investor lawsuit. Case is in process.
Radian Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis 2017-18
Mortgage insurance claims lawsuit. Case is in process.
Education, Designations and Professional/Community Organizations
Jeff Oliver received a Bachelor of Science degree from Georgetown University with honors in Accounting and Finance. Jeff is a Certified Public Accountant and Certified in Fraud and Forensics. He is a member of MBA’s Financial Management and Accounting Standards Committees. Jeff has served several terms on the Advisory Board of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He also has been a part time Adjunct Professor in Accounting and Finance at Georgetown and is actively involved each semester in the Mentor Program at Georgetown.