CitiMortgage, the nation's sixth largest residential wholesaler, Wednesday afternoon informed its loan brokers that it will cease table funding loans next week as it prepares to exit the channel.
A CitiMortgage spokesman said that most mortgage workers in the wholesale division will be absorbed into the company. “The jobs lost will be in the low double-digits,” he told National Mortgage News.
CitiMortgage will only honor rate locks that come in by Feb. 8. “All locked pipelines must be funded and closed by April 30, 2012,” writes John Hummel, vice president and national sales director at the bank, in a memo to brokers.
According to figures compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report, CitiMortgage funded $1.5 billion of home mortgages through brokers in 3Q.
Table funding accounts for just 9% of its total fundings, NMN found.
The spokesman said the bank will remain in retail and correspondent lending.
One broker who has done business with Citigroup dismissed the announcement. “To tell you the truth their rates were nothing special,” he said.
Three years back CitiMortgage cut its wholesale division to the bone but then slowly re-grew the business starting in late 2010.
