Wholesale Changes: Some Lenders are Leaving the Wholesale Lending Business Entirely to Focus Solely on Retail. Others are Staying in, But Dropping Poor-Performing Brokers and Higher-Risk Product Lines (Cover Report: Origination Strategies‪)‬

Brokers and brokerage firms are declining; non-prime and alternative-A products (mostly originated by brokers) have all but disappeared; and wholesale channels have been shutting down right and left. * It's a changing world today, with increased emphasis on retail channels. * I "With the market being off," says George Hanzi-manolis, president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB), McLean, Virginia--whose membership, he estimates, has declined at least 10 percent--"why have two full-force divisions out there when you can just concentrate on one?" * Some lenders are continuing to build their wholesale channels as well as their retail operations, but for them it's a new and different wholesale world, with more control over broker activity. Any non-prime originations are often limited to retail channels, as wholesale operations increasingly focus on conforming loans. * And as mortgage industry mergers continue, some lenders that have exited wholesale face decisions regarding new acquisitions that bring along extensive wholesale operations. * These industry shifts reflect the beginnings of a new lending world. * "As markets started to shift and a lot of the investors started to pull back their product offerings, we decided late last year that it made sense to just leave the wholesale market," says Jill M. Carson, president and chief operating officer of Lancaster, Pennsylvania--based Fulton Mortgage Co., a division of Fulton Bank. "So we're completely out of wholesale." When Bank of America (BofA), Charlotte, North Carolina, announced it was ending its wholesale operations as of the end of 2007, one account executive described it as "strictly a strategic move by the corporation."