WaMu to Add 250 Retail Stores, Including Some Originator Positions

The company recently announced that it will aggregate 250 more financial center stores this year to its nationwide network of approximately 1,800.

“We’re already in the top metropolitan markets in the U.S. from the home loan standpoint,” said WaMu spokesman Alan Gulick. “The adding of the 250 more branches is building on our existing strategy of overlaying our retail banking branches where we already have a home loan presence.”

According to the Seattle-based thrift, “This strategy has proven to be very successful in markets across the country.”

The planned new branches will create 1,500 new banking jobs of which some will be loan officer jobs, said Gulick, but that number could not be confirmed.

Even so, the total number of jobs expected from the expansion is still overshadowed by the cuts that will occur within this quarter. Primarily due to falling mortgages (volume reportedly sunk 47% from the previous quarter to $68.8 billion), WaMu said it would eliminate the equivalent of 2,900 jobs within the company. Of these, 2,000 will be from its home lending business once the operations of its 48 mortgage fulfillment centers are consolidated into 32 locations, said spokesman Adrian Rodriguez.

WaMu reported it expects to open 50 branches in Florida (30 of these in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area), 50 in Chicago — where it entered the market last year, 35 will be in New York and New Jersey, 30 in Texas, 15 in California, and Colorado and Georgia will each get six.

Morningstar analyst Jim Callahan said WaMu’s strategy makes sense, but question lies in whether the branches can be profitable enough to make up for the decline in their mortgage business, the Chicago Tribune reported.