If you want to reap the advantages of being a correspondent lender, now is the time
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Since Citadel Servicing Corp. (CSC) introduced its correspondent lending program late last year, the non-prime market has only continued to pick up steam. And originators who want to take advantage of CSC’s lucrative correspondent program need to hurry.
“We’re approaching the limit of how many correspondent sellers we want to sign up for 2018,” said Will Fisher, senior vice president and national sales and marketing director for CSC. “We postulated at the beginning of the year that 60 correspondent sellers was the perfect number of us, and we’re getting close to that. We’re going to hold it there. Once we close the door, we’re not going to be accepting any more correspondent sellers for a while. The challenge for us is to provide our correspondent sellers all of the knowledge to be successful while familiarizing them to Citadel Servicing’ business methodology. We believe that this powerful combination gives our sellers a unique product menu and a substantial competitive advantage.”
According to Fisher, there are plenty of reasons why it pays to become a CSC correspondent.
“First off, you get paid handsomely,” he said. “You get to make a healthy premium selling loans to CSC on a servicing released basis. You also get front-of-the-line service. The loans fund in our seller’s name, so they don’t have minimal speed constraints; and they operate as a lender. Correspondents are underwriting their own loans and coming to us for guidance on their credit, collateral and compliance decisions. We’re making a commitment to buy that loan from them. And, the risk of an early paid default is minimized as the Citadel Servicing name says it all: 100% of all loans are serviced in-house using CSC’s high-touch technique.”
So why is Citadel capping the number of correspondents?
“We want our correspondent sellers to be successful – wildly successful,” Fisher said. “We don’t want to over-saturate the market. We’re looking for our correspondent business partners to become highly familiar with us creating significant volumes and thus operational efficiencies beneficial to both parties.”
“This insures we are supporting our correspondent sellers appropriately with training and turn times,” Fisher said. “Familiarity with each other is optimal for volume and you also have the exclusivity of product.”
Even with a limited number of correspondent sellers, there’s potential origination volumes in the hundreds of millions.
“If we have each correspondent seller doing, say, $3 million a month, and there are 60, that’s $180 million a month in an optimized environment,” said Fisher. “. We understand our space and know using this approach is eminently probable. It also allows us and the correspondent to maintain an origination relationship in a uniform manner.”
To qualify as a CSC correspondent seller, a mortgage originator’s company should be at least two to five years old and have at least $1 million in net worth.
“We’re not looking for large scale operations,” said Fisher. “We’re looking for mid-sized shops – anywhere from 10 to 100 loan officers is ideal for us. We don’t just want this to be a sidebar item – we want it to be one of their major revenue drivers enhancing the correspondent’s profits and balance sheet.”
For more information on CSC’s correspondent program, click here.
