Norwest Mortgage, the nation's largest residential lender, has promoted the architect of its retail mortgage-lending network to the presidency, a role filled by the CEO for nearly three years.
Pete Wissinger, 45, group managing director for sales and operations, became president and COO Wednesday. Chairman and CEO Mark Oman had assumed the presidency in 1997, when Mark Korell resigned three months after being appointed.
"Pete's innovative strategies, broad base of experience and knowledge and relentless pursuit to position Norwest Mortgage as the customer-service leader have earned the respect of our nationwide team and our clients," Oman said in a statement prepared for an announcement today.
Wissinger will continue to oversee all sales and operational activities for the company's business units, including retail lending, institutional lending and servicing, and will be responsible for finance, which previously reported to Oman.
"Norwest Mortgage has had eight consecutive years of record earnings and 10 consecutive years of earnings growth and I'm looking forward to continuing that," Wissinger said Wednesday.
Wissinger joined Norwest 16 years ago and has led several successful initiatives, including entry into new-construction lending, where Norwest Mortgage became the leader in about six years.
While Wissinger managed retail operations, Norwest Mortgage began buying branch locations and eventually had more than 800 retail outlets in 50 states. He also was involved in the decision to buy Prudential Home Mortgage, which included a telesales operation that now originates $80 million monthly.
Wissinger credited the quality of the company's 15,000 employees - 2,500 of them in the Twin Cities area - for much of its success. "This is a service business," he said. "You need superior people if you're going to deliver good service."
He said Norwest Mortgage grew quickly in new-home lending by developing partnerships with volume builders. "We do a lot of `private label' mortgage banking through our partnerships," he said. An example is Edina Realty, with whom Norwest Mortgage shares ownership of Edina Realty Mortgage.
Norwest, headquartered in Des Moines, is a subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Co. It has nearly 1,100 locations, about half Norwest/Wells Fargo banks. For the first nine months of 1999, it earned $208 million, a 28-percent increase from the 1998 period. In that time, it originated $70 billion in residential loans and its servicing portfolio was a record $274.2 billion. Norwest's retail and wholesale lending funds about one of every 15 homes financed in the nation.
The online business Wissinger helped start remains "tiny," he said, originating about $8 million to $10 million a month. "To put that into perspective, our best sales representatives do more than that in a month." He expects a "slow migration" of lending to the Internet. However, he said, "this still is the largest financial transaction people incur and it's still a relatively complicated process - it's not buying a book."
He said the mortgage market will be smaller this year than in the previous two. Higher interest rates are expected to shrink the number of people refinancing their mortgages and prevent some home purchases. But he said consumer confidence remains high, and the benchmark 30-year rate is 8 1/8 percent, which "in relative terms is not that high."
No comments:
Post a Comment