N.C. pledges $9.8M for 600 IBM jobs

A division of IBM that processes loan applications for the mortgage industry will create 600 jobs and invest $2.4 million in Charlotte over the next four years, Gov. Mike Easley's office says.

IBM Lender Business Process Services, which already has 68 people at its Charlotte headquarters, will expand its facilities there to accommodate the workers. Employees will be paid an average of $59,000 a year plus benefits.

The state will give IBM (NYSE: IBM) a Job Development Investment Grant as part of the deal. If IBM creates all of the jobs called for in the agreement and maintains them for 10 years, the company could receive as much as $9.78 million in tax benefits, the governor's office says. It is the fifth JDIG grant awarded this year.

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The IBM division was founded in 2007. Company spokesman James Larkintold Triangle Business Journalin March that the company was planning on using existing buildings to fit as many as 250 employees at the mortgage-processing unit in Charlotte.

In an interview Tuesday, Larkin said the incentives deal will allow the company to expand those previous plans.

"We're responding to client demand here," he says. "There has been a strong demand."

Larkin declined to comment on whether IBM needed the incentives or whether the company would have expanded in Charlotte without the deal. State law calls for JDIG grants to be given only in cases where jobs otherwise would not have come to North Carolina.

Coastal Federal Credit Union in Raleigh is among the financial institutions that IBM has signed up as customer for its Charlotte operations. The company, which has headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., has 11,000 workers in the Triangle.