Big Banks Losing Mortgage Market Share

JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo recently released their latest earnings reports, showing that mortgage originations and lending had double-digit drops over the previous year, and JPM CEO Jamie Dimon told analysts, “Non-banks are becoming competitors."

April 18, 2019

JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo recently released their latest quarterly earnings reports, showing that mortgage originations and lending had double-digit drops over the previous year, and JPM CEO Jamie Dimon told analysts, “Non-banks are becoming competitors."

JPM's mortgage originations were down 18 percent YoY, and Wells Fargo's mortgage lending dropped 23 annually for the first quarter of 2019. Currently, Wells Fargo remains the biggest mortgage originator in the nation with a 10.7 percent market share in 2018. Meanwhile, non-banks accounted for 54 percent of all single-family volume in 2017, up from 25 percent in 2008, and Quicken Loans had a 5.1 percent share of the mortgage market overall in 2018, Realtor.com reports.

You can kiss George Bailey’s mortgage market goodbye. As the small-town banker in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Bailey epitomized an old-fashioned world in which bankers know every borrower personally. In the mortgage market of 2019, borrowers can do just about everything online, never meeting the lender behind the process.

And as comments from executives of America’s biggest banks made clear last week, that person – or institution – making the loan is increasingly less likely to be a banker.