Rocket, UWM CEOs got hefty paychecks in 2023

As the overall picture of mortgage lending continued to sour last year, the heads of United Wholesale Mortgage and Rocket Mortgage received hefty paychecks to run the top two mortgage companies in the nation.

UWM's CEO Mat Ishbia saw his yearly income double, with the executive taking home over $12 million, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission April 25 shows. Ishbia made a little under $7 million in total compensation in 2022.

Adding to Ishbia's ballooning overall compensation last year was over $1 million in stock awards, earned based on performance against annual company performance metrics, UWM said in a recent proxy filing.

Meanwhile, Varun Krishna, who was tapped to lead both Rocket Companies and Rocket Mortgage in September, received $3.4 million during his first four months with the mortgage lender, according to a filing with the SEC on April 26. 

Krishna received a sign-on bonus of $2 million from Rocket "in order to offset a portion of unvested equity that he forfeited upon resigning from his prior position" at Intuit, a proxy filing from the company added.

In a separate proxy filing published April 25, UWM stated that it ended the year with close to 6,700 team members, of which 44% were female and 36% identified as being ethnically diverse. 

Approximately 1,400 team members were promoted and the median annual total compensation for employees came in at $77,028.

Close to 35,000 mortgage brokers submitted loans to UWM last year, the company disclosed.

For the full year, UWM lost on a GAAP basis $69.8 million in 2023, as compared with $931.9 million of net income one year prior. The 2023 loss was driven by an $854.1 million MSR value hit. Despite this, the company emerged as the nation's no. 1 lender not just in overall and wholesale production, but in terms of purchase mortgage originations.

Rocket, which reported a yearly net loss of $390 million, had approximately 14,700 team members, all of whom were based in the United States or in Canada, it said in its proxy filing to shareholders April 26.The company did not disclose what its median compensation was for employees, nor how many  employees were promoted. Rocket did, however, reveal it spent $51.5 million during the year to fund its career transition program for displaced employees. 

Regarding its TPO channel, the lender said its partner network adjusted revenue was $438.9 million, a decrease of $199.8 million, or 31%, as compared to $638.6 million for the same period in 2022. This was driven by lower than expected origination volume.

At the beginning of 2024, Mike Fawaz, executive vice president of Rocket Pro TPO said he plans to continue building out the wholesale channel by "earning broker partnerships. "We are very focused on being in the trenches with our broker partners, we want to earn the partnership every single day," he said.