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| NetBank Inc.’s exit from the correspondent and wholesale mortgage market will be accompanied by South Carolina layoffs.
A total of 120 mortgage employees in Columbia, S.C., will be receiving 60-day working notices, NetBank spokesman Matthew Shepherd told MortgageDaily.com. Their severance packages will include pay of roughly two weeks per year of service up to 10 years. The affected employees serve NetBank Funding Services, the third-party mortgage origination business, which stopped taking applications from correspondents and broker partners yesterday, according to the spokesman. NetBank expects to complete winding down such operations in approximately two months. Of the company’s $9.4 billion in 2006 mortgage volume, the correspondent originations contributed nearly $3.1 billion and wholesale loans $1.5 billion, the spokesman said. The exit from third-party mortgage lending was announced yesterday. Additionally, NetBank said it agreed to an asset purchase and liability assumption agreement with EverBank, which Shepherd said has expressed interest in some of NetBank Funding’s sales and production personnel and is marketing available opportunities. “In spite of our best efforts to improve the company’s operating profile through the restructuring plan we undertook last year, our company has remained very vulnerable,” NetBank Chief Executive Steven F. Herbert added in yesterday’s written statement. Over time, the company also expects to displace corporate support personnel who serve the third-party mortgage business and other operations, but an exact number for those reductions is not known at this time, Shepherd said. NetBank is retaining its mortgage servicing operations, which employ about 100 people in Columbia, as well as its Clearwater, Fla.-based retail mortgage prime business, Market Street Mortgage, which has approximately 650 employees nationwide, according to the spokesman. Related: Wholesaler Winding Down |
