Wells Fargo, the nation's largest mortgage lender, plans to eliminate 700 more jobs as fewer borrowers are looking to refinance their mortgage loans.
Most of those job cuts are processors of consumer mortgage loans, a Wells Fargo spokesman said Thursday in an email to American Banker. All the affected employees were given 60 days' notice, he said.
"We are committed to retaining as many team members as we can and where possible we are working to identify other opportunities within Wells Fargo for affected team members," the spokesman said.
The cuts will be spread nationwide, including in Charlotte (about 25 positions lost), Minneapolis-St. Paul (200) and California (38),
Last August, the $1.5-trillion-asset bank
"We are reducing staff as a result of the continuing changes in the demand for mortgage financing," a Wells Fargo spokeswoman told the business journals. "Mortgage application volume declined significantly in the last six months of 2013, and we currently expect mortgage origination volume to decline in the first quarter of 2014, reflecting seasonality in the purchase market and lower [refinancing] volumes."
Other major mortgage originators such as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, SunTrust and Fifth Third Bancorp are eliminating mortgage-related jobs.
JPMorgan said early last year that it would cut up to 15,000 jobs in mortgages by the end of 2014 as part of broader layoffs. On Tuesday,
