Home lending activity expanded at SunTrust Banks Inc., while the residential loan servicing portfolio grew and mortgage earnings improved.
Home loan production from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31 was $4.724 billion, fourth-quarter earnings data indicate.
The period consisted of $2.073 billion in retail originations and $2.651 billion in correspondent acquisitions.
Business
was better than in the third quarter, when $4.528 billion in loans funded. Activity also improved from the fourth-quarter 2013, a period that saw $3.935 billion in production.
Refinance share fattened to 44 percent from 35 percent in the third quarter.
For all of last year, mortgage originations were $16.442 billion, sinking from $29.861 billion in 2013.
First-quarter 2015 originations are likely to hold up based on applications, which climbed to $6.6 billion in the fourth quarter from
$6.4 billion three months earlier.
The total mortgage servicing portfolio was $142.116 billion as of Dec. 31, 2014.
The servicing portfolio expanded from $135.804 as of Sept. 30
and $136.704 billion at the end of 2013.
The year-end portfolio included $115.534 billion in loans serviced for others.
The Atlanta-based company’s residential investment portfolio slipped to $38.339 billion from $38.758 billion three months earlier and was reduced from $42.459 billion one year earlier.
Residential assets as of last month included $0.632 billion in government-guaranteed loans, $23.443 billion in non-guaranteed loans and $14.264 billion in home-equity loans.
Delinquency of between 30 and 89 days on the non-guaranteed portion of the mortgage investments
inched up a basis point to 0.46 percent but has substantially improved from 0.61 percent at the end of 2013.
HEL delinquency was also up 1 basis point to 0.71 percent. The HEL rate was 0.80 percent one year prior.
The balance sheet additionally
contained $7.952 billion in commercial real estate assets — including $6.741 billion in CRE loans and $1.211 billion in commercial construction assets. The CRE portfolio was off from $7.954 billion in the third quarter but has grown from $6.336 billion as of year-end 2013.
Delinquency on the CRE loans was reduced to 0.05 percent from 0.08 percent as of the third quarter and 0.09 percent as of the fourth-quarter 2013..
The mortgage business earned $114 million, improving from the third quarter’s $89 million.
Mortgage earnings also increased from the fourth quarter of last year, when the unit generated $69 million in profits.
The fourth-quarter 2014 mortgage earnings consisted of $61 million in production earnings and $53 million in servicing earnings.
Company-wide income before income taxes was $522 million, diminishing from the prior period’s $643 million and the revised $565 million in the year-earlier period.
SunTrust finished last year with 24,638 full-time equivalent employees. Staffing was trimmed from 25,074 people as of the third quarter and has been reduced from 26,281 as of the fourth-quarter 2013.
The network of full-service banking offices edged down nine branches from Sept. 30 to 1,445.
