Adriana Boudreaux – SitusAMC Holdings

Adriana Boudreaux is quick to point out how her company, SitusAMC, provides comprehensive real estate finance services rarely offered by one company.

“We provide services in every step in the life cycle of commercial and residential real estate lending,” she says.

SitusAMC’s services begin with the due diligence and underwriting for lenders in support of loan origination. It can also provide real estate portfolio valuation, warehouse lending support (where banks provide loans without using their own capital), commercial loan servicing, asset management and residential loan compliance.

Adriana Boudreaux | Deputy General Counsel and Head of Legal Contracting U.S. | SitusAMC Holdings

The company supports brokerage of whole loans and related products, valuations, title reviews and transaction management within the secondary market (mortgages bought and sold after origination) and offers an array of innovative software as a service solution to financial institutions.

As deputy general counsel and head of contracting for the U.S., Boudreaux is responsible for managing all aspects of contracting for clients and vendors as she leads a team of lawyers, project managers and paralegals.

“SitusAMC’s offerings are vast, and so are my responsibilities and experiences—which I love,” Boudreaux says. “I aim to ensure our department negotiates efficiently and consistently across different platforms while maintaining best practices. That can require a flexible approach on those tougher deals, too.”

Supporting growth

Situs was founded in 1985 to partner with institutional lenders and investors in commercial real estate. In June 2019, Situs merged with American Mortgage Consultants, founded in 1996, and focused on residential real estate finance.

Rebranded as SitusAMC, the company has grown to about 5,000 employees across the U.S., Europe, and India. In 2022, it supported more than $23 billion in new commercial real estate originations and more than 50 commercial mortgage-backed securitizations— the process in which loans are pooled and sold as securities to investors.

Its residential business segment has run more than 100 million loan compliance audits, brokered more than $330 billion in mortgage servicing rights and whole loans, and values more than $5 trillion of mortgage servicing rights and whole loans monthly.

“We’ve essentially built a highly resilient business that can grow in all market conditions whether focused on origination or defaults,” Boudreaux says.

Since joining Situs and after it became SitusAMC, Boudreaux has participated in the diligence process for two mergers—including the Situs and AMC merger—and more than 10 acquisitions and helped incorporate those company’s contracts and contracting processes into SitusAMC after the closings. Among other reviews, she analyzes a company’s contract templates, its consistency among provisions and its contract organization.

“Performing diligence on the buyer or seller side helps you see the benefits of staying organized and prepared for a transaction or client audit,” Boudreaux says. “Plus, if the company knows and understands its contract data, it executes them better.”

A boost in efficiency

Before the merger, Boudreaux tracked contract terms using Microsoft SharePoint with the help of IT.  After the merger, Boudreaux leveraged and helped integrate a contract management system developed at AMC.

She says using a contract management system developed in-house is beneficial because they aren’t beholden to a vendor. However, they need to ensure that each tracked provision is set up to yield accurate and beneficial data that will answer anticipated questions from a business leader looking to improve operations or a client performing an audit.

After refining and integrating the CMS data points, Boudreaux says she and her team focused on developing workflow tracking tools to understand contract data from intake to execution.  Tracking provides insights into areas such as the volume of contracts in the pipeline, the percentage of templates on SitusAMC’s forms and not the client’s forms, the volumes by service offerings and the turnaround times by which contracts are reviewed and returned. The data helps direct department strategies and needs.

The integration is ongoing. Boudreaux and her team are working with a consultant to leverage additional internal resources to help standardize contract terms and use technology available in the wider market. She says consistency in the terms, or even just the formatting of the contract, is an important step in preparing for the incoming wave of technology, such as artificial intelligence and optical character recognition because it more easily allows SitusAMC to fully use AI and playbooks.

Always advocating

If Boudreaux were ever to wonder when and why she decided to become an attorney, her mother has the reasons in writing—it’s an aspiration she first mentioned in fourth grade in response to a teacher’s question.

“I have always wanted to advocate for people,” she says. “My childhood instinct was to speak up, and I didn’t understand why that was not the norm.”

Born in Mexico and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Boudreaux’s path to an in-house career is a bit more complicated than an elementary school response. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English from St. Mary’s University in 2002 while also studying at the National University of Ireland. In 2004, she earned her J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center.

Boudreaux then joined the Houston firm of Dow Golub Remels & Beverly LLP as an associate attorney, litigating commercial cases before she moved in-house in February 2011 by joining Situs as in-house counsel and corporate secretary.

Outside the office, Boudreaux and her husband, who also works in commercial real estate—though not as an attorney—are raising three daughters.

Having been part of SitusAMC for more than a decade, she says she values the comprehensive nature of her work and being part of the business growth.

“The great thing about commercial litigation is you can learn about different industries while settling disputes,” Boudreaux says. “But being in-house means you are embedded in the business to ensure best practices that pre-empt litigation while helping grow the business. You know what you’re trying to avoid because you’ve experienced the worst outcome in a business transaction.”

View this feature in the Vanguard Winter I 2024 Edition here.