Karen Pribnow

Executive vice president and managing director of servicing for NorthMarq

After 40 years with Bloomington-based NorthMarq, Karen Pribnow, 65, will retire as leader of its loan-servicing business at the end of the year. NorthMarq is a commercial real estate investment banking firm that places commercial real estate loans with a variety of investors. Pribnow, a native of central South Dakota, built the company's loan-servicing practice from $500 million in 1988 to $41 billion today and expanded the department from five to 100 people. Pribnow, who's well-known among lenders across the United States, has serviced both residential and commercial real estate loans in her career. The NorthMarq team services commercial real estate loans on behalf of 50 life insurance companies, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Ginnie Mae and more than a dozen commercial mortgage-backed securities conduits. Bert Libke, NorthMarq's senior vice president/director of servicing, will take the reins following Pribnow's retirement.

Q: How did you get into loan servicing?

A: The first job I had was at American National Bank in St. Paul in more of a clerical position in the mortgage loan department, and I liked it, so I pursued it.

Q: And you worked your way up into management?

A: Yes. I just always liked new challenges so whenever anyone asked me to do something, I'd take it on and I kept learning.

Q: That must have been unusual for a woman in the 1960s?

A: It was. There were a lot of clerical women but there weren't really any in management. It was pretty much all men in that profession. There were some issues because it was a man's world … but NorthMarq always backed me up.

Q: How many real estate loans do you service?

A: At year-end 2012 we were at approximately 5,700 loans. That's compared with a little less than 600 loans in the late 1980s.

Q: Why is servicing so important in mortgage banking?

A: The producer works hard to earn the trust of the borrower to give NorthMarq a chance to find him a lender. Once it closes, servicing is their key contact as we handle the borrower's requests throughout the life of the loan. Once it's closed — for any issue, whether the loan is for three years, five years or 40 years — they come to servicing to handle their request. So servicing continues to interact with them whether it's about insurance or taxes or maybe the borrower wants somebody to assume the loan. Those are all high-touch points and customer service is key.

Q: How has technology affected loan servicing?

A: When I started, everything was in a file room with paper. You'd have missing files because somebody would check them out. … Then we started putting everything on microfiche. Later on, we bought a system that managed the retrieval, backup and storage of our imaged reports and loan files. Definitely, everything is moving toward being paperless.

Liz Wolf is a freelance writer in Eagan. She can be reached at wolfliz99@aol.com.