Though Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. dominate correspondent mortgage purchases, GMAC Inc. is making a push to expand in the channel.
The company said Friday that it plans to set up a special unit that will purchase residential loans from community banks, thrifts and credit unions. To help win this business, GMAC's $42.5 billion-asset Ally Bank has formed a 40-person team that will offer training, technology, and underwriting and processing services to correspondents.
GMAC has hired Doug Miller to be its director of correspondent community banking. He was an executive vice president at Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp., where he had headed the correspondent lending group since November 2006. (Taylor Bean went bankrupt this summer.) Before joining that Ocala, Fla., lender, Miller was a division executive at Washington Mutual Inc.'s correspondent lending channel in Seattle.
Meanwhile, Sanjiv Das, the chief executive of Citigroup Inc.'s CitiMortgage, reiterated the company's "commitment" to correspondent lending despite the departure of several top executives.
Das said in an e-mail to employees last week that Bradley Brunts, an executive vice president of origination services, and Jeffrey Walker, the managing director of its correspondent lending division, had left the company.
Ed Abufaris was named the head of correspondent lending. He had been a senior vice president and national sales director at CitiMortgage, in O'Fallon, Mo. Fred Bolstad was named head of the consumer channel. He had been a managing director of wholesale lending.
