Ally Financial Offers Mortgages Again
After two years out of the mortgage business completely, Ally Financial Inc. has decided to re-enter the business and offer new home loans to customers.
Ally’s GMAC Mortgage unit was one of the largest lenders of subprime mortgages prior to the 2008 housing crisis. It now plans to offers home loan originations next year.
“Don’t think of this as Ally going down the road of the old GMAC,” Jeffrey Brown, Ally’s CEO, said at a recent Goldman Sachs Group Inc. financial conference in New York. Brown vowed that the mortgage company will do things differently this time around.
Ally spokeswoman Gina Proisa says that the bank does not have plans to securitize its originations and it doesn’t plan to keep any servicing rights or build out a servicing operation. Ally will provide more details about its new product offerings in February, but it does not expect to start offering risky products like GMAC did.
During the housing boom in 2006, GMAC’s Residential Capital once ranked 12th among U.S. subprime lenders, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. Ally exited the home lending business in 2013, which led to more than $10 billion in losses and a $17.2 billion U.S. bailout.
Source: “Ally Returns to Mortgage Business Two Years After Total Exit,” Bloomberg Business (Dec. 11, 2015)