Consumer direct

Discover Financial Services will exit the residential mortgage-origination business that it acquired in 2012.

Casey Crawford went from playing on a team that won the Super Bowl to running a mortgage company that he expects to originate almost $8 billion in U.S. home loans this year.

The mortgage lender Nationstar Mortgage Holdings is pouring a lot of energy into a digital and mobile homebuying platform called Xome. The strategy could attract tech-savvy millennials but carries plenty of risks including whether consumers would be improperly steered to its products.

There are more similarities between the NFL and the mortgage industry than at first meets the eye.

WashingtonFirst Bankshares in Reston, Va., has agreed to buy direct mortgage lender 1st Portfolio Holding Corp. in Fairfax, Va.