Pontiac-based United Wholesale Mortgage had a profitable year in 2025 and saw a significant uptick in mortgage refinancing activity in the later part of the year as interest rates dipped.
UWM, the biggest mortgage lender in the country by total originations, announced its year-end earnings results on Wednesday, Feb. 25, reporting a net income, or profit, of $244 million on $3.1 billion of total revenue.
Refinancing activity came out to 43% of UWM’s business for the year, compared to 31% in 2024.
The boost in refi business was a result of mortgages rates dipping in the later half of 2025. The average interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage was nearly 7% at the start of the year and had fallen to 6.15% by year’s end, according to Freddie Mac. Last week, the average rate was about 6%.
Overall, UWM did 17% more in mortgage volume last year than the previous year.
For the U.S. mortgage business in general, the industry is estimated to have done 22% more volume in 2025 than in 2024, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
UWM’s Detroit-based competitor, Dan Gilbert’s Rocket Companies, is scheduled to release its earnings on Thursday afternoon, Feb. 26.
In an earnings call on Wednesday morning, Feb. 25, UWM CEO Mat Ishbia said that 2025 marked the fourth consecutive year in which the company was the No. 1 mortgage lender in the country and the 11th consecutive year in which it was the nation’s top “wholesale” lender relying on brokers, rather than the direct-to-consumer loans, known as retail lending.
“This has never been done in the history of the mortgage industry,” Ishbia said, “and we’re really proud of our success and our dominance across the industry in wholesale and overall.”
Ishbia said he expects UWM to stay No. 1 in 2026 and that the company’s continued investments in AI, or artificial intelligence, will “drive expenses lower while driving production much higher.”
In a break from tradition in the company’s earnings calls, Ishbia did not hold a question-and-answer session with Wall Street analysts. He said the format of the Q+A sessions, with its limited time for responses, doesn’t allow for thorough explanations of UWM’s complex business and its “superior business model.”
Blake Koldo, UWM’s chief business officer and head of investor relations, said in a later phone interview Wednesday that the company’s recent AI investments, particularly its AI virtual loan officer assistant “Mia” that can make outbound calls and handle complex questions, gave a big boost to UWM’s refinancing business, allowing the company to better compete against call center-based mortgage lenders whose traditional strength has been refinancings.
Prior to AI, he said, brokers could devote a large part of their day to making phone calls trying to drum up refinancing business. Now they can have AI make many of those calls, saving them time while increasing their business.
And even though average mortgage rates didn’t dip below 6% last year, Koldo said that was nevertheless a significant number of homeowners in the market to refinance because rates had been elevated for a few years.
“Every day, as long as it (the mortgage rate) continues to go down, there’s thousands and thousands and thousands of loans that are in the money to refi,” he said. “It’s not going to take a material move (downward) to continue to have the refi volume that we’ve had, because, again, AI has given us the ability to compete with the retail lenders for refi’s better than ever before.”
UWM in December announced plans to acquire Two Harbors Investment Corp., a Minnesota-based mortgage servicing firm, in a all-stock deal valued at $1.3 billion. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.
UWM shares were trading Wednesday at $3.90 at 12:24 p.m.; shares traded at about $6.50 a year ago.
The company previously reported having 9,100 employees at the start of 2025, nearly all of them based at its Pontiac campus.
(This story has been updated to include new information.)
Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mat Ishbia’s United Wholesale Mortgage notches profitable year
Reporting by JC Reindl, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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