Origination

Synovus, a bank holding company in Columbus, Ga., has created a Senior Housing Group to serve the financing needs of owners of such properties as convalescent and assisted-living care facilities and nursing homes. William E. Shine joins Synovus as director of corporate banking for specialized healthcare lending.

The market for those seniors who are physically unable or do not desire to stay in the homes they owned is apparently going strong, although it has credit issues of its own.

Park National Corp. in Newark, Ohio, will take a higher-than-expected provision for loan losses in the second quarter due to continued credit problems at its Florida banking subsidiary.

Releases of loan-loss reserves can't prop up bank earnings forever, but after about $150 billion of allowance builds during the recession, they can help for a good long while.

Lawyers for the National Credit Union Association told a federal judge in Los Angeles that the federal agency's June 20 suits against JPMorgan and RBS Securities should not exonerate officers and directors of WesCorp FCU in the 2009 failure of the one-time $34-billion corporate credit union.

PMI Group Inc., Walnut Creek, Calif., said it started on July 1 to write new business in two states through a subsidiary it set up as a contingency for when its main mortgage insurance underwriting subsidiary would exceed the risk-to-capital ratio mandates that 16 states have.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued new guidance on its policies for approving and recertifying condominium projects that are eligible for Federal Housing Administration financing.

Bank of America has named Mike Hall to replace Paul Szymanski as the head of its warehouse lending business. Szymanski left B of A to reunite with former Countrywide Credit Industries president Stanford Kurland and start a warehouse lending business at PennyMac.

Second quarter bank and thrift earnings could see "some pressure" as a result of "relatively weak" revenues from their mortgage banking businesses, a report from FBR Capital Markets warns.

When asked about the still-struggling nonagency market might return, some market participants in New York for the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Secondary Market Conference even took on the controversial question of whether a subprime credit secondary market should come back some day.