Observations From the Market

Renée Tobias · Managing Director, Organizational Advisory, Links Advisory In complex, multi-division private operating companies, leadership transitions—particularly those entering their second or third year under a new chief executive—uncover a…

Warren Buffett once said, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” It has sat on my weekly review sheet for years.…

Since our last note in June, the conversations around Links have continued to broaden — from mortgage production and broker partnerships toward profitability, capital deployment, and how institutions structure the…

  TODAY’S MORTGAGE ENVIRONMENT Mortgage strategy is increasingly a capital allocation and operational efficiency discussion — not simply a production discussion. Higher mortgage yields, compressed retail margins, evolving borrower expectations,…

A Structural and Operational Efficiency Perspective for Financial Institutions   The traditional drivers of mortgage profitability are changing — and increasingly, those changes appear structural rather than cyclical. For years,…

Labor Arbitrage Under Margin Compression Why traditional mortgage expansion economics have fundamentally changed. Executive Summary Historically, mortgage banking profitability was supported by wide gain-on-sale margins and refinance-driven production that absorbed…

The Same Loan, Two Different Outcomes Why mortgage profitability is a structure problem, not a demand problem. Two banks make the same loan. Same borrower, same note rate, same property,…

The Weight a Bank Carries Why the mortgage problem most banks are trying to solve isn’t the one they have. Most bank leaders know the feeling, even if they have…

What We’re Hearing From Banks, Advisors, and Mortgage Leaders Over the past several months, the conversations around Links have started to change. What began as discussions around mortgage production and…