Santander Bank will direct customers who are looking to buy homes to the nation’s largest mortgage lender, Rocket Mortgage, which announced Friday it has signed a deal to be the exclusive preferred mortgage provider for the bank’s nearly 2 million customers.
Santander Bank’s website is already set up to funnel homebuyers to RocketMortgage.com, where a partner landing page informs Santander customers they’re eligible to receive special loan pricing and a savings of $500 at closing. Santander customers are told they’re receiving a loan level pricing adjustment of .625% when applying online for a new loan through the website or by calling a dedicated phone number.
Patrick Smith
“Our relationship with Rocket Mortgage is another example of how Santander Bank is evolving our business and continuing to pursue opportunities for our customers to save, invest and manage their money at Santander,” said Patrick Smith, Santander Bank’s head of consumer and business banking, in a statement.
With this year’s jump in mortgage rates putting the kibosh on lenders’ refinancing business, Rocket and other lenders are looking to shore up purchase loan originations by doing more business with homebuyers.
Bob Walters
“This relationship between Rocket Mortgage and Santander is a perfect fit,” Rocket Mortgage CEO Bob Walters said, in a statement. “Both companies are passionate about delivering exceptional client experiences. Rocket has spent decades building industry-leading technology to make every step in the mortgage process easier.”
Walters said the agreement is “just the beginning of what we believe will be a long relationship between our companies as we innovate together to develop more ways to delight our clients.”
In reporting second-quarter earnings Thursday, Rocket Companies said its Rocket Mortgage subsidiary originated $34.54 billion in closed loans, down 59 percent from $83.76 billion a year ago.
Although Rocket Companies slashed $300 million in expenses during the second quarter to stay profitable, CFO Julie Booth said the company continues to invest capital into the Rocket engagement and services platforms “to expand our client base, drive higher conversion, and lower our client acquisition cost, setting the foundation for our next stage of growth. We will continue to deploy our capital in a strategic and disciplined manner to generate long term shareholder value.”
Rocket Mortgage announced in October that it was partnering with Salesforce to make its mortgage origination technology available as an end-to-end “mortgage-as-a-service” to any lender with licensed mortgage loan officers through Salesforce Financial Services Cloud.
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