Led by aggressive CEO Mat Ishbia, United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) is on a mission to lead the mortgage industry.
That now includes plans to become the first company in the industry to accept digital currency for mortgage payments.
Ishbia made that statement Monday during an call with analysts about the company's impressive second-quarter 2021 earnings report. UWM not only posted a solid profit of $138.7 million in net income — though that was down 74% from a year earlier — it also reported record loan origination volume for the quarter, with $24.1 billion in purchase volume, a 288% increase from $6.2 billion in the same quarter last year.
"The second quarter was our best quarter in company history from a volume perspective," Ishbia gushed during the call, "so we're very excited about the results. Not only did we post record numbers for production, but we almost doubled our prior quarterly production on purchase loans."
He added that UWM delivered $59.2 billion in production, beating guidance of $50 billion to $55 billion.
After discussing the company's performance, he then noted UWM has built "some proprietary technology that will save us over $8 million estimated this year on some proprietary things we've done with some ... document generation and document storage ..."
He then dropped the bombshell: "We've evaluated the feasibility, and we're looking foward to being the first mortgage company in America to accept cryptocurrency to satisfy mortgage payments."
He said that's something UWM has been working on, "and we're excited that, hopefully, in Q3, we can actually execute on that before anyone in the country, because we are a leader in technology and innovation."
The Detroit Free Press later reported that Ishbia said UWM would start with Bitcoin, but would look at other forms of cryptocurrency as well.
In the earnings call, Ishbia added that UWM will also announce in the third quarter "some game-changing technology, an innovation that we're rolling out. We're very excited; it's not things that other people have done." He did not elaborate.
To read the full transcript of the earnings call, click here.
