Can Hsieh Save the Day at loanDepot?
Anthony Hsieh, founder and CEO of loanDepot
Anthony Hsieh was ready to retire and go fishing. By ‘10, Hsieh, the son of Taiwanese immigrants who owned a liquor store in Long Beach, had already sold two online mortgage lenders for life-changing money and watched the mortgage industry disintegrate during the GFC. Instead, he launched loanDepot.
“I saw the mushroom cloud in the industry and all the massive disruption and chaos that happened,” Hsieh later told the Times. “And because of that, I saw a huge opportunity.”
In loanDepot, the tech and growth-obsessed Hsieh built the Lyft to Quicken Home Loans’ Uber, topping $100B in originations in ‘20. His mello tech system, multi-channel sales model and more than 11K employees allowed loanDepot to rack up refi business while other lenders struggled with demand. But that hulking infrastructure 🚧 became a burden when rates spiked. As loanDepot’s losses mounted, Hsieh was thrust into a bruising proxy war with the board, which cast him into the wilderness. Turnaround specialist Frank Martell was hired to right the ship.
So Hsieh went 🐠 fishing. During his exile (‘22-24), loanDepot lost more than $1B, exited the wholesale channel, suffered a debilitating hack that exposed the data of 17M customers, and had its name dragged through the mud via a lawsuit from former COO Tammy Richards (loanDepot was found not guilty this Feb).
What’s On Tap – Aug. 25
loanDepot (Cont.)
Hsieh, the company’s biggest shareholder, saw the stock fall from $31.8 in February ‘21 to just over $1 in March ‘25, when it was announced he was returning to a day-to-day role. With the board stacked with Hsieh loyalists 👑 and expectations that the Bad Times were mostly behind them, he returned full-time as CEO in July.
“It’s personal for me,” Hsieh said in a promo video his first week back. “We need to be a growth company again. We need to compete in any market. We have work to do, but we’ve never been afraid of hard work. Never.”
Under Hsieh, loanDepot has brought the tech 🧑💻 band back together (Dom Marchetti, Sean DeJulia), and is cleaning house. “He’s throwing people out windows,” is how one source put it. loanDepot declined to comment for this story.
Jeff Walsh, who has led production for years, is retiring in September. Sales leader John Bianchi is out, and Tom Fiddler, who oversaw the East Coast, will now lead retail lending. Homebuilder whisperer Dan Peña will serve as president of partnerships. Hsieh is “probably looking to juice production and then find a strategic partner,” said one mortgage exec who knows him. “He’s in his 60s – does he really want to do this for the next 10 years? I think it’s really just that he has to right the ship.”
loanDepot has plenty of ballast to work with: A $118B servicing book, loads of data to throw into AI engines and CRMs, $400M in cash, and pretty solid tech for LOs. Hsieh appears to be returning to a familiar playbook, insiders told The Scoop: tasking Marchetti with upgrading mello, returning to the wholesale channel, opening/expanding offices and recruiting. But even after Martell’s slashing, loanDepot remains in the red. It lost $25M in Q2 (a quarter in which 80% of IMBs made profits) and its margin declined from Q1. It’s also the target of a class-action steering and LO Comp lawsuit that could ripple across the industry. And while the LO-facing tech is solid, loanDepot’s back-end Empower system can get clunky. The company also has ground to make up in the AI race.
loanDepot didn’t have much appetite to get into bidding wars for LOs during the Martell years, but Hsieh is now throwing money at even moderate producers, sources said. They’ve had a couple of recruiting wins, including the hirings of Michael Borodinsky and D.C.-based sales manager Gaurav Mahajan.
In Hsieh’s first quarter back, loanDepot notched $6.7B in volume and $283M in total revenue. Though its overall margin decreased to 330 bps in Q1, expenses also decreased by $4.9M. loanDepot increased its organic refi recapture rate to 70%, which bodes well for future quarters.
“Our company is special, comprised of a unique set of assets,” Hsieh said during Q2 earnings this month. “We will return to competing at the highest levels.” 🏇
Dimon’s “Shitty” Mortgage Biz: An Insider Weighs In
JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon
JPMorgan overlord Jamie Dimon thinks mortgage is a “shitty business” – Queens-speak for paltry profits and regulatory headaches. A JPM alum who spent years in the mortgage division shared his insider perspective with The Scoop. 👇️
As someone who worked in Manhattan and was often at 277 Park Ave, there was a running joke that mortgage was “fighting for shelf space,” as if we were a variety of potato chips at the grocery store 🥔 . The firm loves investments, hates mortgage and only retains it as a product in order to keep existing deposit/investment relationships on the books and to bring in net new money from new mortgage clients via the relationship discount program.
The ROE on certain financial advisory and investment products at JPMC are as high as 33%. Mortgage is often around 10% and the mortgage division is typically in the red after everything is tallied up (or so they say). Top performing LOs at the firm have now been licensed for investments so they can be compensated for the net new money inflows. They will eventually make more on the relationship discount deposits than the actual mortgage, First Republic style.
As someone who is passionate about the mortgage business, this is one of the main reasons why I left. Chase controls the entire process, start to finish: their customers, their LOs, their underwriters, their funding desk, their secondary marketing, their own bond trading desk to sell the MBS, their own loan servicing, etc. They have the cheapest money cost in the business and could completely dominate the mortgage space if they wanted to. But they don’t want to. Corporate hates mortgage and the only way for mortgage to stay afloat has been the net new money relationship discount play.
Is Lisa Cooked? Pulte’s Crusade Against Fed Gov.
President Trump said Friday that he will fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook if she doesn’t resign, amid allegations that she committed mortgage fraud. But the evidence 🧾 presented by FHFA Director Bill Pulte in a 44-page letter to the DOJ isn’t conclusive.
In June ‘21, Cook received a 15-year refi for $203K plus interest on an Ann Arbor property. The loan required Cook to occupy the property as her “principal residence” within 60 days of closing and live there for at least 1Y. Zillow listings show the Ann Arbor house was briefly listed for rent in ‘23 and for sale in ‘24 before being pulled from the market. Cook reported rental income on it in 24 and ‘25.
In July ‘21, Cook bought a condo in Atlanta. That purchase occurred just 2 weeks after she received the Ann Arbor mortgage. The evidence presented doesn’t show if the Atlanta 🍑 mortgage Cook received indicated it was for a primary residence or an investment property – Pulte’s letter alleges the former. It’s also not clear if Cook received rental income from the Atlanta condo between ‘22 and ‘23.
Fraud has many elements, and intent is key. Occupancy fraud cases are tricky, particularly on refis. 💁
New York AG Tish James, also on the administration’s hit list, was accused of committing mortgage fraud on a family property in Brooklyn and a home in Norfolk. But documents show James repeatedly telling the LO in Norfolk that the home was not a primary residence and was intended for her niece.
These politicians may very well have committed mortgage fraud. The only way to know for sure is to go through the full files. An est. 0.86%, or about 1 in 116, of all mortgage applications in Q2 contained fraud, per a Cotality study, compared with 0.81% (1 in 123) during the same period last year.
Far more common than mortgage fraud is simple clerical error. Lenders move fast. People make mistakes.
Tech talks 💾
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Not only is M33-backed BeSmartee not for sale, CEO Tim Nguyen is on the hunt. He hopes to acquire a stagnant SaaS company with less than $5M ARR.
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LOS player Mortgage Cadence isn’t accepting new integrations. Could its parent Accenture be looking to sell? Word is they’re working with Evercore.
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We also hear AWS has tapped Mortgage Automation Technologies, creators of The BIG Point of Sale, as it pushes deeper into mortgage. Built in collaboration with ZEB AI, the partnership will feature voice-driven LO tools, document automation, and an LLM that reads every POS/LOS action to report on both consumer and back-office activity in real time. AWS also has a big data deal with Rocket Companies.
Quickies
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Emerson out. Legendary Rocket Cos. prez Bill Emerson is hanging up the spurs. He was CEO of Rocket Mortgage from ‘02-’17 and served as a bridge from Jay Farner to current CEO Varun Krishna. Speaking of Farner, has anyone tried his new oyster bar restaurant in Franklin, Michigan? 🚀 🦪
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Yes, new Fannie board member Barry Habib did in fact get a membership to Mar-a-Lago. But, he tells The Scoop, he got it 6Y ago. 🦀
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“I’m seeing a lot of recruiting efforts solely around joining a JV or MSA or some type of captured business,” one mortgage exec said. “And they’re going after average producers to fill the roles. Last year I lost two people to that model, and I just thought it was coincidence.”
ARMchair Critics
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