Rocket Cos. offers more voluntary buyouts to employees

Rocket Cos. is offering more voluntary buyouts to employees following a tremendous decline in profit in the second quarter.

The company in a statement Monday said it’s issuing a second round of “voluntary career transition offers” to a small, undisclosed number of employees across multiple business areas within the organization. The announcement comes weeks after Rocket Cos. reported a profit of $60 million between April and June against $1.03 billion in the first quarter.

“As a result of today’s market, some team members have told us they are considering a move to another position or a completely different industry and have asked that we reinstate our career transition incentive, first offered earlier this year,” said Mike Malloy, chief administrative officer for Rocket Central, in a statement. 

The move was first reported by Crain’s Detroit Business.

Employees accepting the optional plan will receive “several” months of salary, portions of their banked time off, benefits coverage through the end of the year and job search assistance, the company said. 

Rocket Cos. had approximately 26,000 employees ahead of its first round of voluntary buyouts in April, a plan offered to 8% of its employees in Rocket Mortgage and groups across its Amrock title and valuation business. While the number of workers who accepted the buyouts was undisclosed, the firm incurred charges related to the buyouts topping $61 million in the second quarter, it said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. 

Rocket is looking to save $200 million in the current quarter but won’t fire employees despite some excess payroll, Vice Chairman and CEO Jay Farner said in an earnings conference call earlier this month. Lender competitors along with servicers and other technology vendors have laid off thousands of professionals as the industry reckons with profitability challenges.

“We’ll need that capacity as we move into 2023 as we grow market share again,” Farner said. “So it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for us to go through a significant capacity reduction only to turn around and have to hire again four or five months later.”