Norwest Mortgage Seen Headed for No. 1 Rank

With a 40% increase in volume, Norwest Mortgage has joined the small cluster of lenders that can claim $100 billion in servicing.

In fact, the Des Moines unit of Norwest Corp. could win the bidding for $42 billion of servicing from Prudential Insurance Co.'s mortgage unit, well-placed sources say. That would make it the nation's No. 1 servicer.

Prudential's mortgage business, which includes affinity programs in addition to the servicing, was placed on the auction block earlier this year and looked at by virtually all of the industry's larger mortgage firms.

Industry observers speculated that Norwest was taking more than a cursory look when it hired industry top gun Mark L. Korell. Most recently president of GMAC Mortgage Co., Mr. Korell was brought aboard in September to heads Norwest Mortgage's lender and investor services group.

He and Mark C. Oman, the mortgage company's president, are steering a juggernaut that relies on internal growth and purchases to build business, including servicing volume.

Through existing operations, Norwest Mortgage serves a broad range of borrowers, from farmers in Iowa to Navajo Indians in Arizona. The company prides itself on a record as one of the largest lenders to minorities in the country. All told, the company serviced 1.2 million of residential loans at June 30, 25% more volume than year-end 1994.

Norwest expands its customer base - and servicing volume - by acquiring other company's portfolios, including the mortgage unit of Michigan National Bank, a transaction that brought in $8.6 billion of servicing.

In last year's second half it also bought Directors Mortgage Loan Corp., with $13 billion of servicing, plus $15 billion of servicing and an operations center from BarclaysAmerican.

And earlier this year Norwest landed a plum assignment - taking over mortgage originations for Wells Fargo Bank. It will also cross-market other services to Wells Fargo customers.

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