After initial fears of a major market contraction in early 2020, the mortgage market actually rebounded significantly throughout the year, resulting in higher mortgage demand across the country.
Mortgage demand had already spiked +18% from the previous year’s levels by June 2020, according to CNBC. In fact, a record-breaking $4.3 trillion in mortgages was originated in 2020, topping volume levels not previously seen since 2005. In just the fourth quarter alone, mortgage lending reached an all-time single-quarter high of $1.3 trillion in total lending. All in all, the total number of originated closed-end loans grew by 67.1% between 2019 and 2020, representing an increase of 5.3 million.
While this would seemingly be an attractive benefit to mortgage lenders at the time, many–like our client–realized that they did not have the capacity among their internal team to support the rising demand. They did have a team of in-house mortgage processors, but these specialists were struggling to keep up with demand and could not support the volume that was coming in.
Additionally, even if they were able to build up capacity over time through traditional hiring efforts, they feared the transitive market opportunity could pass by the time they were able to bolster their team.
Their team knew they needed to find a way to build capacity quickly to support business growth–but in a sustainable and flexible manner.