Despite a drop in home-equity loan production, new mortgage lending surged at Bank of America Corp. — gaining for the fourth consecutive period. As was the case in the prior quarter — servicing, assets and staffing decreased.
First-quarter earnings data released Wednesday by the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender indicated that $16.930 billion in residential home loans were funded during the three months ended March 31.
BofA’s lending business jumped ahead of the $15.036 billion funded during the last three months of 2014.
Recent figures also indicate a 56 percent increase over first-quarter 2014 originations — which at the time was the slowest quarter for BofA since at least 2003 based on the oldest data maintained by Mortgage Daily.
First-quarter volume included $13.713 billion in first mortgages. It also included $3.217 billion in HEL originations, though HEL lending was down from $3.129 billion in the fourth quarter.
The mortgage servicing portfolio thinned to $669 billion from $693 billion as of Dec. 31, 2014, and $780 billion as of March 31, 2014.
The mortgages serviced for investors portion of the servicing portfolio came to $459 billion, declining from the $474 billion provided as of Dec. 31 of last year and the $527 billion as of the last day of last year’s first quarter.
As of the end of March, the corporation owned $291.496 billion in residential assets. Its mortgage investment portfolio shrank from $301.922 billion as of the last day of last year and $334.453 billion as of March 31 of last year.
The most-recent mortgage asset total reflected $207.925 billion in residential mortgages and $83.571 billion in HELs.
The lender’s latest balance sheet also included $49.446 billion in commercial real estate loans, more than the $47.682 billion in owned loans as of Dec. 31, 2014, and the $48.840 billion balance given at the same time in March last year.
New repurchase claims of $3.416 billion shot up from the prior period’s $1.559 billion. BofA was left with $25.358 billion claims outstanding, which were primarily made up of private-label mortgage baked securities.
Within the consumer banking segment, income before taxes was at $2.345 billion, a decline from the $2.697 billion reported at the close of 2014’s fourth quarter and just above the $2.347 billion that marked the end of last-year’s first quarter.
As a whole, the bank’s first-quarter income before taxes moved up to $4.7 billion from $4.3 billion in the three months preceding. BofA experienced an $0.7 billion dollar loss from Jan.1 to March 31 a year ago.
In the legacy assets and servicing division, current staff numbers were reduced 9 percent from 17,100 employees reported at the last quarter’s closing. The legacy assets division had a workforce count of 26,200 at the end of the first quarter the previous year.
On a company-wide level, BofA reported 219,658 full-time equivalent employees. Staffing shrank from the 223,715 workers reported last year as of Dec. 31 and the 238,560 team members listed last year as of March 31.
With 4,835 financial centers accounted for at the end of March, BofA had 20 fewer locations than inventoried on the last day of last year.
