A seasonal quarterly decline in the number of loan originators registered in the national database was offset by a year-over-year increase.
As of the first quarter of this year, there were 527,132 mortgage loan originators registered in the
Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System.
Registration count was way down from the final quarter of last year, when the total was 536,804 — though the decline was seasonal.
The
Conference of State Bank Supervisors provided the data in the NMLS Mortgage Industry Report 2016 Q1 Update.
The significant drop from the fourth quarter was the result
of originators who left the business at sometime during 2015 but whose licenses didn’t expire until the end of the year.
A more telling comparison is with the first quarter of last year, when there were 512,045 people registered.
Included in the first-quarter 2016 total were 127,924 state-licensed originators who maintained 394,171 licenses. State registrations tumbled from 135,016 three months earlier but climbed from 118,940 a year earlier.
The California Department of Business Oversight terminated nearly 4,000 originator licenses, and 3,309 were terminated by the Texas Department of Savings and Mortgage Lending. All other state saw fewer than 3,000 originator licenses terminated during the period.
Also reflected in the most-recent total were 402,427
federally registered originations, fewer than 407,241 as of the fourth-quarter 2015 but more than 396,446 as of the first-quarter 2015.
Of the first-quarter 2016 federal originator NMLS registrations, 84,934 originators worked for banks supervised by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., 46,936 were employed at financial institutions regulated by the Federal Reserve Board and 214,667 hung their hats at banks supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
In addition, 56,715 of the federally registered originators were employed at credit unions insured by the National Credit Union Administration, and 1,794 were on the payroll of institutions overseen by the Farm Credit Administration.
The
latest overall total was reduced by 3,219 to reflect originators who maintained both state licenses and federal registrations.
The report indicated that there were 25,101 companies registered in the NMLS system as of the first-quarter 2016. Company count declined from 26,127 in the final quarter of last year and was also down from 25,285 in the first quarter of last year.
Company count included 15,504 state-licensed entities with 37,536 total licenses. The number of firms was fewer than the 16,005 as of the previous quarter but more than the 15,279 as of the year-earlier period.
In addition, another 21,238 branches of state-licensed entities were NMLS-registered. The branches maintained 49,591 licenses.
There was an annual increase of 11 percent for state-licensed companies on annual basis in North Dakota, the biggest rise of any state. Colorado saw a more than 10 percent rise, Louisiana was up nearly 10 percent, as was Oregon. No other state had a double-digit increase.
The California Bureau of Real Estate terminated 466 mortgage company licenses, while 110 were terminated in Florida and 103 were terminated by the Texas Department of Savings and Mortgage Lending. All other states saw fewer than a hundred company licenses terminated.
Also reflected in the company total were 9,691 financial institutions, down from the previous quarter’s 10,220 and from the first quarter of 2015’s 10,099.
The number of overall NMLS-registered companies was reduced by 94 to account for firms with both state and federal registrations.
