Offshoring elements of the mortgage business has become commonplace and lenders that ignore the efficiencies of tapping cheaper overseas labor markets could find themselves losing ground to their competitors, noted Craig Focardi, an analyst with TowerGroup and author of a new offshore study. Large lenders (doing at least $7.5 billion in new loan volume) these days are more seriously considering sending some back office or IT functions to India. Lenders are anxious to offset direct…