A day after Wells Fargo quit the wholesale channel, sending shock waves throughout the industry, at least one trade group official believes that eventually the bank may re-enter.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Wells re-entered the wholesale market sometime in the future,” said Marc Savitt, president of the National Association of Independent Housing Professionals, a trade group that represents loan officers and appraisers, among others.
Wells told this website that it will remain in correspondent lending. (Early Friday there was speculation that Wells might eventually exit correspondent lending, too.)
Savitt and other brokers said they are seeing more new wholesalers enter the channel every week. (The NAIHP chief owns a brokerage firm in West Virginia and has been on the forefront of industry efforts to change loan officer compensation rules that will create licensing and testing parity between bank and nonbank LOs.)
Some in the industry believe it may take these new wholesale players several years before they can fill the capacity vacuum created by Wells, but not Savitt. “The temporary void created by the Wells exit will quickly be filled,” he told National Mortgage News.
Friday, July 13, is the last day that Wells will accept any new applications from its approved network of loan brokers. It will honor all mortgages that were approved and are currently in its pipeline.
Rick Sharga, executive vice president of Carrington Mortgage Holdings, said Wells’ exit from the broker channel “opens up an opportunity for nonbank lenders like Carrington to fill the void.” (For full analysis of the Wells exit from wholesale see the Monday paper edition of National Mortgage News.)
