Mr. Cooper taps veteran banking exec as president

Mortgage giant Mr. Cooper has tapped Mike Weinbach, a veteran banking executive, as president following current leader Chris Marshall's expected retirement at the end of this year. 

Weinbach, the longtime CEO of Chase Home Lending and former CEO of consumer lending at Wells Fargo, will begin his role Feb. 1, Mr. Cooper announced Tuesday. Marshall, also the company's vice chairman, will remain onboard to assist with the transition and lead fundraising for Mr. Cooper's mortgage servicing rights fund. 

"I have long admired Mr. Cooper's impressive record of growth and profitability as well as their commitment to the customer experience, and I am thrilled to hit the ground running with this fantastic team," said Weinbach in a press release. 

Company chairman and CEO Jay Bray in a statement commended Weinbach's background in consumer lending. Weinbach worked at JPMorgan Chase from 2003 through 2020, heading mortgage operations in his final five years there. He worked in the newly-created consumer lending role at Wells from 2020 to 2022, overseeing the launch of a new portfolio of credit cards. 

The incoming president will oversee Mr. Cooper's originations, servicing and technology efforts. Weinbach steps in at a critical time for the publicly traded giant, following a massive data breach in November exposing the Social Security numbers of over 14 million customers. The incident has spawned over a dozen class action lawsuits from consumers, while Moody's in November suggested the incident could impact the firm's creditworthiness. 

The company reported strong earnings in the third quarter, posting net income of $275 million, nearly double the amount of its second quarter results. Bray, at the time of the earnings and Marshall's retirement announcement in October, credited Marshall for implementing "bank-like" efficiencies to the company during the pandemic. 

Kurt Johnson, Mr. Cooper's executive vice president and chief financial officer, then anticipated gains in owned servicing moving forward. As part of the firm's busy 2023, it closed in August on the acquisition of the servicing business of Home Point Capital. That transaction added $83 billion in MSRs to bring Mr. Cooper's servicing portfolio closer to $1 trillion.