Home lending inched up on a quarter-over-quarter basis and soared on a year-over-year basis at Citizens Financial Group Inc., though a slowdown is in the offing.
The Providence, Rhode Island-based financial institution revealed in its fourth-quarter 2016 earnings report that income was $414 million before income taxes.
Profits diminished from the third quarter, when the total came to $427 million. But they improved from the final quarter of 2015, when the total was $331 million.
Mortgage banking fees earned
came to $36 million in the fourth-quarter 2016, up from $33 million in the prior period and $20 million in the year-prior period.
Mortgage originations from Oct. 1, 2016, through year-end 2016 totaled $2.220 billion. Production crept higher from $2.187 billion in the third quarter and soared from $1.426 billion in the final quarter of 2015.
Full-year mortgage production climbed to $7.757 billion last year from $5.721 billion in 2015.
New business in the first-three months of this year is likely tumbling based on the origination pipeline, which sank to $1.9 billion at the close of the fourth-quarter 2016 from $2.8 billion
three months earlier.
Although no servicing portfolio was reported for year-end 2016, the most-recent 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicated that the company serviced $17.4 billion in residential loans as of Sept. 30, 2016.
Citizens owned $32.042 billion in residential assets as of year-end 2016, more than $31.934 billion at the close of the third quarter and $31.924 billion as of the conclusion of 2015.
The most-recent residential total consisted of $15.115 billion in mortgages,
$2.608 billion in home-equity loans and $14.319 billion in home-equity lines of credit.
Commercial real estate loans in the bank’s investment portfolio increased to $10.624 billion from $10.152 billion three months earlier and $8.971 billion one year earlier.
Citizens said it increased its mortgage loan officer staff by 96 in 2016, including 43 in the fourth quarter, to finish the year at 538.
Last year concluded with 17,639 full-time equivalent employees on the payroll. Headcount grew from 17,625 people at the end of the third quarter and 17,714 as of the end of 2015.
