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| Wachovia Corp. is moving forward on an aggressive plan to boost its option-ARM originations.Wachovia CEO Ken Thompson said at a recent Citigroup investor conference that the bank has trained 50 “financial specialists” to sell the option adjustable-rate-mortgages, a specialty of California-based Golden West, at Wachovia branches.
And that’s just the beginning. “By year’s end we expect to have 1,000 (employees) selling option arm products,” Thompson said, according to a Web cast of the conference. “Even in a down market for mortgages and even in a market that has been particularly brutal for option arms versus fixed rate mortgages, with that added distribution in 2007 we will produce more (option arm loans) that Golden West produced in 2006. “We think we are on the road to success here.” Wachovia, the nation’s fourth largest bank with reported assets of nearly $700 billion, paid $25.5 billion last year to acquire Golden West, a thrift. Thompson also said that Wachovia is using the Golden West “footprint” to place more mortgage originators in bank branches. “Today we are sitting with 200 Golden West originators sitting in Wachovia branches,” he said. “Our goal is by mid-year 800 of those workers will be in Wachovia branches generating … option arm products. “We’re expanding distribution of (option arms) through Wachovia Channels,” Thompson said. “It’s an area of growth for us.” Thompson said originators and “financial specialists” will concentrate on the pick-a-payment product offered by World Savings Bank, a unit of Golden West that has more than 130 branches. The acquisition, Thompson said, will allow Wachovia to grow its mortgage business in the west and southwest. According to a Wachovia statement, pick-a-payment “provides a fixed rate of interest to the borrower with flexible payments.” Thompson said the Golden West acquisition and Wachovia’s aggressive expansion into the mortgage market has allowed Golden West employees to keep their jobs. “If you are in a customer-facing job, that is you are in a branch or in the mortgage business, you are guaranteed a job,” he said. “As a result of that we have been able to retain talent. “Only now we are having people trained and going into the Wachovia sales channels to sell the pick-a-pay mortgages that Golden West is famous for.” |
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Patrick Crowley is a feature journalist and blogger for MortgageDaily.com. He is also a reporter, blogger and columnist for The Cincinnati Enquirer. |
