News of the retirement of Mark Oman as the head of the mortgage group at Wells Fargo reminds us that the career of this unassuming mortgage banker has been exceptional.
Starting 30 years ago with Norwest Mortgage, a unit of the old Norwest Bank, Oman led his various units to the top of the mortgage charts. Norwest displaced Lomas and Nettleton as the top mortgage servicer (we can remember when L&N hit $25 billion in servicing, a gee-whiz milestone for the 1980s) and was in turn displaced by Countrywide Financial, run by Angelo Mozilo, Oman’s contemporary but polar opposite in most things.
Wells Fargo, meanwhile, decided it no longer wanted to be in the mortgage business, except to arrange loans for its best customers. But that changed just a couple of years later, when Wells bought Norwest Bank. Norwest Mortgage came along in the deal, and Wells found itself back in the mortgage game, and back in the top tier.
It has remained there ever since, and is currently first in originations and second in servicing with a portfolio of more than $1.8 trillion (compare that with Lomas’ $25 billion!).
Wells led FHA/VA originations as well as Ginnie Mae servicing last year and was second in correspondent lending. In fact, there is hardly a mortgage category it isn’t first or second in (usually in tandem with Bank of America).
Oman stayed on at Wells to complete the integration of Wachovia Bank’s mortgage unit into Wells. Wachovia was noted for huge volume of option mortgages (called Pick-a-Pay there), the kind of creative financing that nearly bankrupted the industry. Apparently, the integration has been successful and their ability to poison Wells has been diminished.
Oman didn’t do everything right during his long tenure. Wells did get into subprime lending, though they discontinued it right before the crash. And it is one of the servicers embroiled in consent orders from federal regulators and a thorny settlement case with the nation’s attorney generals on the “robo-signing” scandal.
But all in all Oman has led an exemplary career, showing many other commercial bank mortgage bankers how it’s done.
He didn’t mimic Mozilo by staying too long at the party and ending up as the poster child for all that can be bad in mortgage lending. It’s worth remembering there’s also a lot that can be good in mortgage banking. Oman, unlike Mozilo, ducked the bright lights and the theatricality and stood instead for a good job done in a run that lasted for decades.
