New York Community Bancorp in Hicksville plans to close all of its out-of-market mortgage offices.
The $90.1 billion-asset company, which recently completed its purchase of Flagstar Bancorp, said in a press release that the move will eliminate about 70% of its retail home lending offices.
“While legacy Flagstar was proactive in rightsizing its mortgage business throughout the past year, we expect the mortgage market to remain challenged,” Thomas Cangemi, New York Community’s president and CEO, said in the release.
“These decisions are among the most difficult decisions our leadership team has to make,” he added. “However, they are necessary to ensure the long-term success of our mortgage business.”
Cangemi said during a conference call to discuss quarterly results that New York Community plans to reduce its workforce by about 10%. He said headcount in Flagstar’s mortgage division is now below 800 employees, a roughly 60% reduction from 2021.
New York Community said it still remains a large mortgage originator and the nation’s sixth-largest sub-servicer and second-biggest warehouse lender.
Separately, the company said that Banking-as-a-Service deposits rose by 46% in the fourth quarter from a quarter earlier, to $11.5 billion. Those deposits totaled $1 billion a year earlier.
Most of the deposit growth came from its government banking as a service vertical and was related to certain prepaid debit card programs.