NewDay USA, a Fulton, Maryland-based mortgage lender that serves veterans and their families, is expanding its Howard County headquarters and expects to hire about 135 loan originators, credit analysts and office staff by the end of the year.
NewDay, a division of private investment firm Chrysalis Holdings LLC, started in 2002 and now employs about 510 people.
It is expanding office space to about 135,000 square feet from its current 85,000 square feet to accommodate demand, said Frank Thorp, a NewDay spokesman.
The company expects to employ about 1,000 people by the end of next year.
The company provides mortgage loans and refinancing guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs and is expanding its offering of home loan originations, Thorp said.
NewDay completed $1.3 billion worth of loan originations last year and expects to complete more than $2.2 billion worth of loans this year.
“There are more veterans that are asking for our services than we are currently able to support, so we are going to grow to support their applications,” Thorp said.
The lender typically hires recent college grads with no mortgage experience and trains them in programs that run up to 18 months at its NewDay University.
In February 2015, NewDay was required to pay a $2 million penalty after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said the company deceived consumers about a veterans’ group’s endorsement of NewDay Products and participated in a scheme to pay kickbacks for customer referrals.
Thorp said NewDay had an affinity relationship with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, in which the group used NewDay as its preferred vendor. The VFW did not clearly disclose that NewDay’s donations to the veterans group was based on its members applying for loans. NewDay has since paid the fine, Thorp said.
