BankUnited to Discontinue Retail Mortgage Originations

BankUnited, Inc., a national bank headquartered in Miami Lakes, Florida with 98 banking centers in 15 Florida counties and six banking centers in the New York metro area, has announced that it will no longer be originating mortgages, effective immediately.

Mary Harris, SVP of Marketing and Public Relations told MReport the company chose to do this due to a "lack of scale," meaning the company just was not producing enough volume.

"BankUnited has made the decision to exit the retail mortgage origination business due to a lack of scale, Harris stated. "We are committed to honoring all of our loan commitments made to our customers and will get those loan closed in a timely and orderly fashion. We are also fully committed to all of our other mortgage banking businesses: mortgage warehousing, lending, servicing, and corresponding business."

BankUnited's announcement comes just a couple of weeks after Ditech Financial, a subsidiary of Walter Investment Management in Tampa, Florida said that it would no longer operate in the distributed retail mortgage space.

Harris stated that the bank will not be accepting any more mortgage applications as of January 15, 2015, but any applications that were already submitted prior to the announcement will still be honored and processed.

Earlier this month, BankUnited announced  that it will reveal its financial results for the fourth quarter of and the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 next week on Thursday, January 21, 2016 before the market opens. A conference call to discuss the quarterly results will be held at 9:00 a.m. (Eastern) with Chairman, President, and CEO, John A. Kanas and CFO, Leslie N. Lunak.