Top 10 Lenders and Services Liberty Mortgage has reduced its workforce through several rounds of layoffs this year and continues to “offshore” some jobs, former employees told HousingWire.
In response to lower origination volume, the New Jersey-based mortgage company has made at least four rounds of layoffs this year – in March, May and August, multiple sources told HousingWire. Positions eliminated included loan officers, closers, underwriters and customer advocates, according to six former employees. (The former employees requested anonymity because they believed speaking in public would jeopardize their future job prospects.)
Private company Freedom Mortgage did not respond to requests for comment on the layoffs, which sources said primarily concerned the wholesale division.
Freedom, like most major lenders and managers, has long outsourced some of its operations, hiring staff overseas to process mortgages at lower cost. The lender has a contract with moderthe outsourcing branch of the activities of Archwell Holdings, sources said. Moder, founded in December 2020, has operations in India and the Philippines and plans to open an operations center in Central America this year, according to its website. Erik Anderson, president and CEO of Archwell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Several former employees said the cuts at Freedom led to the transfer of lending and underwriting positions to India, with US-based Freedom employees reviewing work done by international workers.
“The only thing the US team needs is communication and a quick overview of compliance that is done by the outsourced staff,” said a former US employee. “You’re handling a higher volume because you’re not doing the actual work. You do a quick scan, correct errors, you are the communication element. »
After the dismissals, organizational restructuring took place. As part of these restructurings, some supervisors were demoted to become team leaders and closers, sources said.
“I changed team leaders four times,” said a former junior underwriter who worked remotely. “They would do a series of layoffs and they would restructure the way you did your job.”
Changes included customer advocates (a single point of contact between broker and underwriter) sharing an inbox set up to respond to inquiries from mortgage brokers, being assigned to individual brokers due to a drop in business, former employees said.
“They were trying to streamline the process, but they said we didn’t have the most efficient volume,” a former employee said.
Liberty, directed by Stan Middleman, complaints on LinkedIn have more than 10,000 employees. HousingWire was unable to confirm whether this figure included overseas staff.
Freedom ranked sixth among lenders in the country by origination volume in the first half of 2022, but like its competitors, it is suffering from the impact of high mortgage rates. According to data from Inside Mortgage Financing, the lender issued $19 billion in loans in the first six months of this year, including $8.3 billion in the second quarter of this year. Loan origination volume fell 74% in the second quarter compared to the same period last year.
Last month, Freedom sold RoundPoint Mortgage Service to the mortgage agent Matrix Financial Services Corp. and a wholly owned subsidiary of a real estate investment trust Two Harbors Investment Corp. two years after acquiring Freedom.
The acquisition brought Freedom’s combined portfolio of owned and outsourced mortgage servicing rights to $310 billion, Freedom announced at the time.
The deal with Matrix led Roundpoint to shut down some sales operations and lay off employees.