While company-wide earnings improved at Citigroup Inc., mortgage earnings deteriorated from a year ago. It was a similar story for home-lending activity, as the company continued to reduce its third-party servicing portfolio.
The New York-based financial conglomerate said in its third-quarter earnings report that income from continuing operations before income taxes was $6.0 billion. Earnings improved from $5.7 billion in the prior three-month period and $5.6 billion a year prior.
At $185 million during the three months ended Sept. 30, 2017, mortgage revenues were very similar to
$188 million in the second quarter. A 39 percent drop in mortgage revenues, though, was recorded versus the third-quarter 2016.
First-mortgage lending volume rose to $3.2 billion during the third-quarter 2017 from $3.1 billion in the last report. Business was down by more than half from $6.5 billion in the third-quarter 2016. For the first-three quarters of 2017, mortgage production amounted to $10.1 billion.
The fourth quarter is shaping up to come in around the third-quarter level based on
salable mortgage rate locks, which inched up to $1.7 billion in the third quarter from $1.5 billion three months prior.
An estimated $127.5 billion in residential assets were serviced by Citi. The servicing portfolio was reduced from $131.7 billion at the end of the preceding quarter and slashed from $241.1 billion at the same point last year. The most-recent total consisted of $61.7 billion in third-party servicing and $65.8 billion in residential assets. Residential assets were comprised of $44.2 billion in real estate lending assets, $10.1 billion in residential first mortgages formerly reported by Citi Holdings and $11.5 billion in home-equity loans also formerly reported by Citi Holdings.
North American retail banking branch count concluded last month at 695, no different than as of mid-year 2017.
