Online shopping giant Amazon may be looking to get into the mortgage lending business, according to this article in Wall Street Journal.
While limited in scope, those in the mortgage lending business believe home loans can’t be far behind.
Amazon a few months ago asked a number of banks for proposals about a hybrid-checking account, according to press reports. Among pitches currently being mulled are ones from Capital One and JPMorgan Chase.
In an email, Brent Nyitray, director of capital markets at iServe Residential Lending, posted the following in response:
“Amazon is in talks with JP Morgan to start providing checking account services,” he writes. “Amazon mortgages can't be far behind.”
“Has (Amazon CEO) Bezos ever looked at banking P/E ratios? They aren't triple digit,” he added.
HousingWire itself gets a large amount of reader traffic from Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, with mortgage technology stories driving a large part of the interest.
From the WSJ article:
"Any move by Amazon to start its own banking arm would subject it to capital rules and other regulations that likely would limit its aggressive expansion. And there would likely be stiff opposition. An effort by Walmart Inc. more than a decade ago to obtain a type of banking license withered after intense criticism from a range of companies and lawmakers.
For JPMorgan or Capital One, winning the assignment would be a chance to keep a potential competitor close and strengthen ties to a company that is popular among millennials, whose financial habits are changing quickly. In a recent poll of 1,000 Amazon customers conducted by LendEDU, an online student lender, 38% said they would trust Amazon to handle their finances equally as they would a traditional bank."
