Other firms had more of a jumbo focus. Second-ranked PHH Mortgage reported that 50.0 percent of its originations in 2013 were non-agency jumbos.

A number of lenders said they have put an increased emphasis on jumbo ARMs due to the rise in interest rates that started in May of 2013.

Not only is the spring home buying season beginning to show signs of life, so too is the M&A market for mortgage companies.

The report, conducted by Alvarez & Marshall, was making the rounds in Washington Wednesday morning. John O’Neill, a managing director in the evaluation firm of Alvarez & Marsal, confirmed to IMFnews that his company conducted an evaluation on the GSEs for the Blackstone Group.

W.J. Bradley Mortgage Capital announced a number of new jumbo mortgage products this week. Among the offerings is a loan with a 10 percent downpayment requirement for balances of up to $850,000.

It would appear that Wells Fargo is raiding the senior staff of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Of course, it could be a mere coincidence.

Translation into English: If you bought Ocwen’s stock at $60 and it’s now trading at $40 and you’re really steamed, give us a call.

The only sector that has a higher securitization rate is the government-insured market, where Ginnie Mae production represented 98.5 percent of FHA and VA lending.

M&A specialists believe that some lenders obtain their Ginnie approvals merely for the purpose of increasing their franchise value without having solid plans to issue securities.

Coping with the potential for fair lending violations in the new qualified-mortgage world is a source of high anxiety for many compliance professionals in mortgage finance. But Gregory Imm, chief compliance officer and director of community affairs and fair lending and responsible banking at Fifth Third Bank, recently shared some lesser-known considerations that should increase industry representatives’ confidence in their compliance and readiness. Speaking to participants in a recent webinar sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, an affiliated publication, Imm said the first area is measurement. “Institutions need to establish key performance risk indicators of what should be measured, and not what is convenient to measure,” he said. “I say ‘convenient’ because those are the activities that are easy to measure because you have the data at your fingertips.”