Countrywide Financial Corporation
Countrywide Financial Corporation, headquartered in Calabas, CA, USA, is a diversified financial service holding company engaged in residential mortgage banking and related business.
Countrywide, founded in 1969, is currently the leading home loan lender and a leader in many other directions of real estate finance providing a wide range of mortgage in USA: Home Loans, Insurance, Commercial Lending, Wholesale Lending, Banking, Capital Markets, Correspondent Lending, Closing Services and more.
Countrywide has been one of the best financial services companies in USA for the past 25 years, ranked # 91 in the Fortune 500.
From its humble beginning in 1969, nowadays Countrywide is country’s # 1 home loan leader and the first mortgage lending surpassing $ 1 trillion in servicing.
It was not so simple to become so big and successful in its very challenging business for such short time as Countrywide did.
The short history of its development and grows shows that Countrywide’s success was brought by always timely effective response to changing financial situation, diversification, technological innovations, effective leadership and more.
The company was established in 1969 by two New Yorkers, Angelo Mozilo and David Loeb, as a mortgage company with ambitious name Countrywide. From the very beginning it was established as the umbrella organization Countrywide Credit Industries with mortgage lending subsidiary Countrywide Funding Corporation later on becoming Countrywide Home Loans.
The start of company was not very successful till Countrywide obeyed to the standard rules of mortgage business.
First real move to the present success was initiated by company’s founders Loeb and Mozilo by creating new rules under which it was established the retail branches in 1974, referred as “company stores”, where customers could receive a bank like service. The success of this idea created five more Countrywide branches.
With a help of very effective advertising, the loan production and branches grew through the 1970s.
In spite of the black economical conditions with high interest rates in late 1970s and early 1980s, Countrywide managed to open branches in eight other states really the “country wide” mortgage company.
Conventional loans introduced by Mozilo have also supported this expansion.
To escape from the interest-rate volatility pressure, Countrywide began in 1981 to diversify its business establishing Countrywide Securities Corporation, a subsidiary selling securities backed by loans made.
Other important step for the future of company was the hiring of young entrepreneurs between 1975 and 1985, among them some of nowadays managing directorate.
By the late 1970s Countrywide made further very important early move into the computer technology to computerize the loan servicing system.
This incline to the contemporary computer based financing technologies became one of the company’s strongest features reducing the cost of loan services.
The Countrywide experienced enormous expansion in the mid 1980s with housing market rebounding and was listed among 200 Best Small Companies in 1985 by Forbes Magazine. In the end of 1980s, Countrywide’s loan servicing portfolio became $ 11 billions.
Later on Countrywide diversified further its mortgage industry by originating in 1993 the Countrywide Wholesale Lending Division, thereby becoming the wholesale lender leader in America. The further right step was the launching of the Correspondent Lending Division to escape of the fixed-rate mortgages.
The diversification brought the growth of servicing volume and the company opened by 1989 the Countrywide Servicing Exchange subsidiary to broker these activities for other companies.
Always being among leaders in computer based technologies, Countrywide made AS 400, a scalable and flexible mid-range system, the foundation of its computer system what lowered costs, enhanced efficiency and made the home loan process increasingly easy for customers.
In the 1990-1995 Countrywide became the number one mortgage lender. Along with it, Countrywide played a major role in assisting with housing and economic challenges among the lower-income and minority people.
The Countrywide solid strategy for the diversification was vital to ensure its constant growth in spite of volatile interest rates cycles.
This brought the opening of new Consumer Markets Division to reach directly to the consumers. The process of obtaining home loans became really easy.
During 1996-1999 Countrywide continued the transformation to the diversified financial services to decrease the interest-rate volatility, leverage existing expertise and widening its financial services.
In 1996 company expanded its home loan production line by launching Home Equity Lending Division. This was followed by the establishment of Full Spectrum Lending, Inc. offering loans to consumers with less-then-perfect credit, what became the internal division of Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. in 2004. Due to a fuller home loan product line, the company began to provide other financial services through its family of companies using a home-centric approach.
These home-centric strategies were used with consumers and financial institutes in three major areas: loan closing services, insurance and capital markets.
Countrywide’s loan closing services Land Safe was created in late 1990s to ensure a smooth home loan process and involve additional business opportunities.
In addition, the Countrywide Insurance Services, Inc. was grown to facilitate the homeowners insurance for its loan customers. Nowadays it provides insurance products for homeowners, home protection, life, health, disability and auto insurance by help of its Web site, cwinsurance.com.
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