bank chief executive

Advertisement Ally, whose defunct GMAC Mortgage unit was one of the biggest lenders of subprime mortgages in the run-up to the 2008 housing bust, will inch back into direct home loan originations next year, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Brown said this week at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. financial conference in New York.

“Don’t think of this as Ally going down the road of the old GMAC,” Brown said, referring to the home lending unit that brought Ally to the brink of collapse.

The bank has no plans to securitize its originations, and it won’t keep any servicing rights or build out a servicing operation, Ally spokeswoman Gina Proia said in an e-mail. The bank will detail new product offerings, including a new credit card, at its investor conference in February.

ResCap was once of the nation’s top subprime lenders, but eventually GMAC and ResCap began dragging down Ally’s business, with ResCap eventually falling into bankruptcy.

In 2012, Ally announced that it was going to shutter its mortgage business after the conclusion of ResCap’s bankruptcy proceedings.

In May 2012, Ally executives said they planned to sell off $1.3 billion in mortgage servicing rights owned by Ally Bank as part of the wind down.

"You can live in your car if you don't pay your mortgage," then-Ally CEO Michael Carpenter said in 2012. "I don't mean to be cute, but the fact is people make their car payment before they pay their mortgage. Advertisement