New players dominate market

Despite three major banks ratcheting down on their mortgage servicing portfolios, two others have stepped in to fill the void, according to recently released statistics on mortgage market share.

According to Trefis, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp has earned a large portion of the U.S.’s mortgage market share, as former big players – Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan – continue to shrink their respective portfolios.

“Wells Fargo is the nation's largest mortgage originator, funding one of every three mortgages in the U.S. The bank originated a record $524 billion in mortgages in 2012 - a figure that fell to $175 billion by 2014,” Trefis writes in its financial breakdown of Wells Fargo. “Also, at the end of 2014 Wells Fargo serviced (processed monthly payments of home loans) $1.86 trillion in mortgages - one of every six mortgage holders nationwide - making it the largest servicer of mortgages in the U.S.”

Of the nation’s top-five mortgage servicers, four are big banks and only one is a non-banking institution (Nationstar).

Still, large banking institutions control most of the market.

Wells Fargo accounted for $1.8 trillion in mortgages serviced in Q1 of this year; JPMorgan serviced $724 billion, Bank of America serviced $459 billion; U.S. Bancorp serviced $225 billion; and Citigroup serviced $212 billion.

The Bank of America has seen the most dramatic change in the size of its mortgage servicing portfolio since the economic downturn in 2008.

In Q1 2008, BoA had the second largest share of mortages serviced at over $1.6 trillion which, as previously mentioned, has been cut to a large degree since that time.

“Bank of America's mortgage business has been the biggest source of concern for investors, as there are significant doubts regarding the quality of its mortgage portfolio,” Trellis writes in its analysis of the bank. “Bad mortgages, and settlements related thereto, have cost Bank of America billions of dollars in recent years.”