IBM fire sale continues with the offloading of $200m platform

Ginny Rometty continues to trim the fat at Big Blue

IBM has continued to shed business units it deems non-core after selling its mortgage servicing platform.

Big Blue CEO Ginny Rometty has made no bones of her plan to restructure the vendor, having recently sold off $1.8bn (£1.4bn) worth of software assets to Indian services firm HCL, soon after announcing the mammoth acquisition of Red Hat.

The latest unit deemed surplus to requirements is IBM's Seterus platform, which was built in post-crash 2008 to aid an IBM client managing mortgages. The division has been sold to mortgage firm Mr. Cooper.

IBM said: "The mortgage servicing business is not core to IBM's portfolio, and Seterus, an IBM subsidiary, has been run as a standalone business.

"This definitive agreement signed between IBM and Mr. Cooper is another example of IBM's commitment to disciplined portfolio management."

IBM did not disclose financial terms of the deal, but said that Seterus contributed $200m to its revenue in 2018.

The vendor said the sale would "modestly" improve the revenue and operating margin of its Global Business Services consultancy arm.