Though BB&T Corp. saw quarterly mortgage lending sink, full-year activity bested its prior-year counterpart. The residential loan servicing portfolio also thinned.
From Oct.1 to Dec. 31 of last year, Branch Banking and Trust Co. funded $3.535 billion in new home loans.
The operational statistic, as well as loads of other financial data, were provided in the Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based firm’s fourth-quarter earnings report.
Production fell $1.504 billion short of third-quarter residential lending.
Comparatively, the most-recent total was short of the $3.888 billion in fourth-quarter 2014 originations.
Still, BB&T outperformed prior-year lending activity on a year-over-year basis — closing $18.107 billion during all of 2015 compared to $17.401 billion throughout 2014.
Correspondent lending at $2.0 billion and retail originations at $1.5 billion made up the fourth-quarter 2015 production total.
At 42 percent for the latest financial period, refinance share rose from a third in the third-quarter.
As of Dec. 31 last year, the lender slightly trimmed its total mortgage servicing portfolio to $122.169 billion from $122.580 billion as of Sept. 30 and $122.257 billion as of Dec. 31, 2014.
The most-recent servicing portfolio total included $91.132 billion in residential loans serviced others and $31.037 billion in bank-owned loans serviced.
The financial institution claimed $30.533 billion in residential assets at the end of December 2015. This balance was smaller than the $31.070 billion documented three months earlier and the $31.090 billion reported for 12 months earlier.
On home loans, delinquency of 30 days or more improved nine basis points from the third-quarter 2015 to 2.70 percent at the end of the succeeding three-month period.
On a year-over-year basis, the delinquency rate saw a more dramatic improvement — falling 42 BPS.
As of the end of last year, commercial real estate assets on the balance sheet inched up to $17.153 billion at from $17.120 billion at the close of the third-quarter. The most-recent CRE holdings balance was also greater than the $13.457 billion accounted for at year-end 2014.
CRE assets as of Dec. 31, 2015, consisted of income producing properties at $13.421 billion and construction and development loans at $3.732 billion.
Moving on to earnings, fourth-quarter 2015 mortgage banking income before taxes amounted to $80 million — or $14 million less than the downwardly adjusted amount brought in during the preceding quarter.
Compared to fourth-quarter 2014 earnings, the latest quarterly mortgage income was $52 million lower.
At the holding-company level, however, income before taxes showed a slight quarter-over-quarter up tick.
BB&T increased earnings to $793 million in the fourth quarter from $755 million in the previous period. Income fell short, however, of the $880 million pulled in during the same period in 2014.
The firm’s quarterly employee average came to 36,059 as of Dec. 31, 2015. Staff ranks increased by 1,057 people counted at the end of September and by 3,794 workers inventoried as of Dec. 31 the previous year.
At the end of the fourth-quarter 2015, BB&T accounted for 2,139 banking, or 11 fewer than claimed at the end of September.
