Career moves

Mortgage industry hiring and new job appointments for the week ending Jan. 13.

Flushing Financial in Uniondale, N.Y., has its next chairman lined up.

American Mortgage Consultants has acquired a business unit that handles due diligence and quality control for residential mortgages from Stewart Lender Services.

Independent mortgage banking and brokerage firms added 4,000 employees in November, even as rising interest rates took its toll on loan application volume.

Mortgage industry hiring and new job appointments for the week ending Jan. 6.

Now that it has completed the purchase of its rival private mortgage insurer United Guaranty from AIG, Arch Capital Group plans to trim the sales force while avoiding service disruptions.

President-elect Donald Trump's choice of well-known Wall Street lawyer Jay Clayton to head the Securities and Exchange Commission was a relatively safe move that suggests his other financial appointments may be equally conservative, industry observers said.

The Senate Banking Committee will have six fresh faces in the new Congress as Republicans grapple with a slimmer majority.

This was a year of shocks and surprises, including a multimillion-dollar verdict after one lender sued another, regulations putting a lender out of business, Brexit driving rates down and Donald Trump's election pushing them back up. Here are 10 events and trends from 2016 that changed the industry.

Mortgage industry hiring and new job appointments for the week ending Dec. 30.

Mortgage industry hiring and new job appointments for the week ending Dec. 23.

Andrew Jetter is stepping down as the chief executive of Federal Home Loan Bank of Topeka after serving as the president and the chief executive for 14 years.

Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin is facing growing pressure from Senate Democrats to account for his leadership of a bank accused of shoddy foreclosure practices.

First Commonwealth Financial in Indiana, Pa., has hired a former Regions Financial executive to lead several of its consumer lending groups.

Citigroup's global head of retail banking and mortgages, Jonathan Larsen, who has been known as an advocate of digital banking, resigned for personal reasons, the lender said.

The transition team for President-elect Donald Trump is considering several candidates to fill key spots at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Federal Housing Administration, including a homebuilder and former lender.

PHH Corp. plans to close a Buffalo, N.Y.-area office next year, which will result in the layoff of 80 employees, extending the staff reductions already taken in 2016.

Mortgage industry hiring and new job appointments for the week ending Dec. 16.

When Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20, Democratic appointees across the government are expected to follow him out the door, to be replaced by officials chosen by Donald Trump. Not Mel Watt — he isn't planning to go anywhere.

Stanford Kurland will step down from his role as CEO of PennyMac Financial Services and its affiliate PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust and assume the role of executive chairman of both as part of a broader executive reorganization.