9 months ago
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Top 10 mortgage lender and servicer NewRez is restructuring its distributed retail mortgage business, which has resulted in cuts to regional and divisional managers. The restructuring also includes reduced compensation for loan officers, and sources said that many are seeking new opportunities at rival lenders.
Nonproducing regional and divisional managers were let go on Wednesday as part of the restructuring, multiple sources told HousingWire.
A top executive at NewRez told HousingWire that the goal is to “flatten” the organization and better align the distributed retail division with other sales forces to capture servicing business.
Sources said that NewRez had engaged in merger-and-acquisition talks with at least one large independent mortgage bank to sell its retail division, still known to some in the industry as Caliber Home Loans, but a deal did not materialize. NewRez declined to comment on recent M&A rumors, but an executive said its retail platform is not for sale.
“We’re committed to retail,” the NewRez executive said in a conversation with HousingWire on Thursday. “There’s always noise about NewRez not being committed to retail. That’s not an accurate statement.”
NewRez said the restructuring will position LOs to generate their own business while also executing on in-house servicing leads.
NewRez is among the industry’s largest holders of mortgage servicing rights (MSR), with a portfolio that clocked in at $452 billion in unpaid balance as of January, per Recursion estimates.
“Given the size of our MSR portfolio and focus on recapture, we believe our localized model is a differentiator, especially when you compare it to other large servicers,” the NewRez executive said. “So, we’re committed to retail, and we want to align our leadership with our goals and objectives.”
Employees on Thursday told HousingWire that significant changes were made to loan officer compensation agreements and they expected many LOs to depart for other lenders.
NewRez said it hoped to retain LOs and would continue to hire in the distributed retail channel.
NewRez, itself owned by real estate investment trust Rithm Capital, acquired Caliber in 2021 in a deal that was valued at nearly $1.7 billion. Much of the appeal was tied Caliber’s servicing portfolio. As of June 203, more than 200,000 loans had been transferred to the NewRez technology platform.
Executives at Rithm Capital have also floated the possibility of spinning out a mortgage division.
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