Banks Lose Thousands of Mortgage Originators

Mortgage loan originators who were registered in the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System as of the second quarter of this year totaled 566,449.

The count, which includes loan officers who work for financial institutions and state-licensed originators, has increased from the same period last year, when the total was 562,469.

The numbers were based on an analysis of current and previous data reported in NMLS Mortgage Industry Report 2018 Q2 Update from the Conference of State Bank Supervisors.

In the first quarter of this year, the count was 558,552, though there is always a quarter-over-quarter increase from quarters two through four since licenses don’t expire until the end of the year.

Second-quarter 2018 registrations included 156,273 state-licensed originators, soaring from 146,786 in the same quarter last year.

But originators working for financial institutions fell to 414,900 as of mid-year 2018 from 419,941 a year earlier.

The financial institution total included 214,350 employees of banks regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, 88,646 people on the payroll of banks supervised by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and 49,075 originators employed at banks overseen by the Federal Reserve Board. Another 1,917 worked for banks regulated by the Farm Credit Administration, and 63,587 were on the payroll of credit unions regulated by the National Credit Union Administration.

The sum was reduced by 4,724 to reflect originators who were both federally registered and state licensed.

NMLS data indicate that there were 25,904 companies registered in the NMLS database, more than 25,736 as of mid-2017.

State-licensed mortgage firms expanded to 16,866 as of June 30, 2018, from 16,395 a year previous.

Financial institutions, though, fell to 9,122 from 9,432.