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Financial Freedom Loses Top Wholesale Reverse Mortgage Lender Title

image RM Insight published a new report showing that JB Nutter has over taken Financial Freedom as the largest wholesale reverse mortgage lender.  The data shows that over the last year, Nutter saw its wholesale business grow 76.8% compared to Financial Freedom seeing it’s volume drop 41.3%.

Below is a list of the top 10 wholesalers over the last 12 months

  Lender Units Growth
1 JB Nutter 16,715 76.8%
2 Financial Freedom 16,163 -41.3%
3 Bank of America 9,936 34.5%
4 World Alliance Financial 5,230 92.1%
5 MetLife 4,914 147.3%
6 Generation Mortgage 1,883 243.6%
7 Sun West Mortgage Company 1,643 -19.7%
8 Genworth Financial 1,544 476.1%
9 Urban Financial 1,400 471.4%
10 Wells Fargo 1,022 882.7%
  • Retail volume by direct lenders increased 33.4% from February to March, while broker volume through the Wholesale channel increased 15.4%
  • A big part of this is due to a re-surgence by Wells Fargo in March, with a 700+ endorsement improvement from February to March that was bigger than total volume for all but the top 5 lenders in March.  Endorsements can be volatile due to insuring delays and other issues, but it’s still a pretty impressive boost.
  • Over the last 12 months there have only been 2 where Retail volume outpaced Wholesale: March 2009 and May 2008.  We’ll be watching closely to see if the trend lasts, as I suspect many brokers might be also…

Check out the graph below which shows the nosedive that started in 2007 for Financial Freedom’s wholesale business.  Ouch. 

image

To read the entire report and analysis see the link below. 

Wholesale Leaders – March 2009