Over 500k Registered MLOs Under Expanded NMLS Criteria

By: Jann Swanson •

The fifth annual report of the State Regulatory Registry (SRR) shows substantial growth in its National Mortgage Licensing System (NMLS) as that system was expanded to allow state agencies to use it to manage a wide range of non-depository financial services licenses. At the end of the 2012 SRR reports that 13 state agencies were using NMLS to license a total of 37 non-mortgage license types including money services, debt collection, and consumer finance.

At the end of the year NMLS contained active state licenses or federal registrations on approximately 30,000 unique companies and 520,000 individual state licensed or federally registered mortgage loan originators (MLOs). As the system of record for state regulatory agencies NMLS is able to track the number of unique companies and individuals as well as the number of licenses they hold in each state. At the end of the year there were 18,414 companies holding a total of 36,148 state licenses and 21,211 entities holding a total of 35,581 branch office licenses. There were 120,142 state licensed individuals holding a total of 258,948 licenses.

The 2013 renewal season was the first in which all 11,052 federally regulated institutions and 399,286 registered MLOs renewed through NMLS. OCC regulated institutions numbered 1,836 but it had by far the largest number of individual MLOs registered, 232,142. FDIC regulated entities numbered 4,258 along with 74,868 individuals. There were 4,099 institutions and 47,932 individuals registered through NCUA. The Federal Reserve registered only 798 institutions but 42,830 individuals. Since federal regulations do not require a separate registration in each state, NMLS does not have any insight into where these entities are engaging in mortgage loan origination.

All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands engaged NMLS to license their mortgage companies, branches, and MLOs in 2012. Companies within the state-supervised mortgage industry engage in a wide variety of business activity; 87 percent reported they engage in first mortgage loan brokering and 49 percent in second mortgage brokering. Twenty percent are engaged in first mortgage lending.

Statistics appear to show some consolidation in the industry. The number of companies holding licenses decreased by 3 percent during 2012 while the number of licenses increased by three percent. MLO licenses increased 21 percent while the number of individuals holding them increased by eight percent.

Other 2012 achievements and milestones noted by SRR were:

  • Expansion of the NMLS Policy Committee to reflect the new industries being registered through NMLS.

  • The addition of major functionality to NMLS including improvements to NMLS Consumer Access,and enhancements related to credit report processing, the mortgage call report, and the renewals process.

  • The new National SAFE MLO Test with uniform state content was completed and presented to the state for adoption.

  • The fifth NMLS Annual Conference was attended by 575 persons including regulators from 58 state agencies.