Posts Tagged ‘Genworth’
As we wind down the summer with Labor Day in the rear view mirror, it’s perhaps only fitting that the rest of the year is coming into view. If July’s numbers are any indication of what’s to come, the long rumored shift in business momentum toward large institutional shops and away from small brokers appears to be well under way.
Both Retail and Broker/Wholesale volumes were up in July (albeit off the pace of a furious bounce back in June), but the contrast couldn’t be clearer: Retail growth was more than 3x as fast as Broker/Wholesale, further widening the lead Retail only recently gained in total volume.
Among lenders, there’s a very interesting divergence happening as well. From a combined Retail/Wholesale perspective, many of the top 10 lenders are under-performing the industry’s growth rate since the May low point, but 3 lenders are striking exceptions:
- Genworth is up 228% to 581 units, with much of the growth coming from Wholesale
- Metlife is up 85% to 1,062 units
- Wells Fargo is up 37% to 1,460 units
Doing some quick math, it’s clear that these three lenders alone accounted for 97% of the increase in units from May to June for the entire industry. That’s perhaps the best example we’ve ever seen of a very narrow recovery in volume, which begs the question why these three are succeeding so much more than the rest of the industry together.
These are large institutions but there are other large institutions here that did not see similar growth, and 1 of the 3 isn’t an HMBS issuer so that argument has holes too. We don’t have an answer to this riddle for you this month, but for now we’re content to simply live in interesting times and hope someone does a case study someday.
Be sure to click the link below to access the full report:
We’re a few days behind our usual schedule as we enjoyed a quick trip out to Dallas for Reverse Mortgage Day in Texas. As always, it was very well organized and if you were busy networking in the halls or didn’t attend, you can find our presentation on current trends in the reverse mortgage space here.
July saw another double digit increase in HECM endorsement volumes over June, up 11.3% to 5,901 loans. Still well off last year’s pace, but gaining traction as the application volume increases indicated a few months back.
- July’s strength was broad based, with the 8 higher volume regions all showing increases and only Rocky Mountain and Great Plains declining. Both of the decliners have consistently been the smallest volume regions anyway, so they didn’t slow the overall industry growth significantly.
- Competition increased in July although at a much slower rate (+3.5%) that continues to illustrate a trend toward the larger companies surviving best in this environment.
- Despite just 4 of the top 10 lenders increasing volume from June, the top 10 as a group grew faster than the overall market, up 15.1%. Triple digit jumps from Wells Fargo and Metlife led the way, with Genworth continuing its recent growth streak by almost doubling for the second month in a row.
- In spite of the continuing lower volume levels the industry is actually approaching a 2 year high in average monthly endorsements per lender, due entirely to the drastic reduction in competitors.
- Among the 81 markets tracked here, several large cities stand out for having the highest monthly productivity figures per lender (endorsements per lender): Houston, New York and San Francisco each are among the top markets year to date. Of course, if you can overcome the regulatory/licensing restrictions in North Carolina or the Caribbean, Greensboro and Puerto Rico are both off the charts…
We don’t talk too much about our paid client services in this space since we know most readers are just looking for a quick (free) update on the reverse mortgage market. For those of you who are looking to identify the top zip codes in your territory to target your marketing (seminars, mail, etc.), head over to our Retail & Brokers page to check out a new service we’re offering for just $20 per month: Sales Territory Scorecard.
Just tell us where you do business and start targeting your efforts where your sales and marketing efforts are most productive.
The full report is available by clicking the image below. Enjoy!
Most years you want to see some good news before you’re six months in, but given all the headwinds for the industry we’ll take our wins where we can get them. June marked the first growth in HECM endorsement volumes in 2010, finishing with 5,304 and up 16.5% from May’s dreadful levels. Sure, the absolute number is nothing to cheer about, but everyone is always in a better mood on the way up than the way down. Now if we can just avoid a major principal limit cut in October perhaps the trend will have some legs.
- June in many ways was a mirror image of May, with all 10 regions showing growth after declining last month. Of course, May was so low that it would be tough not to, so it’s also worth pointing out that an even 5 of the 10 regions were also above their April levels – although Mid-Atlantic just barely cleared that threshold by 1 loan.
- Houston and Shreveport continue to lead the way among metros, as they are the only 2 (of 81) showing growth year to date. Both are in the Southwest region, which has seen the smallest declines this year at -24.7%, with Northwest/Alaska at the other end of the scale, down -45%.
- And while we did see an increase in active lenders from last month, competition continues to fall faster and rise slower than volumes. You can see the resulting higher productivity levels per lender in the Endorsements per Lender chart on page 2, showing a positive trend now rising to our industry average for the past two years.
- There’s an astounding statistic on the chart below that as well: Over 1,000 lenders left the business in the first 6 months of 2010. While there were some 400 new lenders to partially offset that figure, there were still 655 fewer lenders YTD compared to Jan-Jun 2009.
- Each of the top 10 lenders was also up in June, evidencing a broad based market growth. Genworth in particular more than doubled their May figure and also turned in their strongest performance of the past twelve months. If you believe that large, brand name institutional lenders are important to this industry, then you’ll agree that it’s good to see Genworth growing retail again. Congrats to Jesse and team!
Drop us a line if you’re heading to Irvine for the NRMLA Roadshow and we’ll buy you a beer while you’re in our neck of the woods.
The full report is available by clicking the image below. Enjoy!
