Rocket Mortgage cuts 50 positions

Rocket Mortgage handed pink slips to "roughly 50 employees" last week, a company spokesperson confirmed.

The reduction round comes two weeks after Rocket announced it had cut 20 employees from its marketing team. 

"As is common practice in all companies, Rocket regularly looks at the priorities of the business and what roles are needed to achieve those goals," said Aaron Emerson, spokesman for Rocket Mortgage, in a written statement.

He pointed out that the recent reduction is minimal, representing "less than one quarter of one percent of the roles in the company." 

"These decisions are never taken lightly, but are only made harder by the over-sensationalization of eager trade media," Emerson said. The Detroit-based megalender would not confirm what teams or roles were impacted by the reduction.

Other recent initiatives by the lender include a reshuffling of upper management following months of low origination activity in the market at large. Rocket Mortgage promoted Mike Fawaz as its new executive vice president of Rocket Pro TPO, while Austin Niemiec became Rocket Mortgage's chief revenue officer.

Despite current market hurdles, the lender sees a path forward in capitalizing on purchase business from first time-homebuyers by way of its personal finance application, said Brian Brown, chief financial officer at Rocket Companies, during a webinar hosted by Fitch Ratings in January.

The lender's Rocket Money application, formerly known as TrueBill, includes millions of members who don't have mortgages with the lender. 

"That could literally be a game changer for how a mortgage company does business on the purchase side," Brown said. "So that diversification is a big deal."

In the third quarter the lender ceded the throne of top originator to United Wholesale Mortgage, which bested its total quarterly mortgage loan volume by $7.9 billion according to their earnings reports. Rocket originated $25.6 billion during the most recent period, compared with $34.5 billion in the previous quarter and $88 billion one year prior. UWM reported third quarter volume of $33.5 billion.