CitiMortgage, a top 10 ranked correspondent buyer of mortgages, has an “exclusionary” list of lenders that it will no longer conduct business with, industry sources told National Mortgage News.
A company spokesman would not comment directly on the existence of the list but said, “We revised our correspondent base a couple of years ago around quality issues. But we continue to do business through this channel, and we monitor and make adjustments to our list as appropriate.”
In March, Wells Fargo caused a stir in the industry when NMN broke the news that Wells had an exclusionary list of 88 correspondent sellers. (NMN has a copy of the list but never published it.)
Many firms wound up on the Wells list because they were embroiled in buyback disputes of one form or another.
“It’s no secret that correspondent [buyers] like to weed out their lists every so often,” said one secondary market official, requesting his name not be published. “They might wind up on the list because of buyback problems or a weak capital position.”
According to the Quarterly Data Report, Citigroup ranks eighth among correspondent buyers. Wells ranks first.
