Ohio-based digital mortgage lender Lower and Residential Wholesale Mortgage (RWM) have moved to settle a poaching lawsuit filed earlier this year in federal court in Texas.
A two-page notice filed by Lower on May 16 offered few details about the settlement, but it signals the end of a brief legal battle, which was pending for less than three months.
The original complaint, filed by Lower in March 2025, claimed that Residential Wholesale Mortgage poached 17 workers whom Lower acquired through its early 2024 acquisition of Thrive Mortgage.
Neither party immediately responded to HousingWire‘s requests for comment.
National Mortgage News reported that two of Lower’s former employees are still employed with RWM, per the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System.
In a separate case, Lower has a pending lawsuit against New American Funding (NAF), which it filed in February, over similar poaching allegations.
In that suit, Lower alleges that former branch manager Andrew Steven Kolmeier and NAF worked together to poach 12 employees, all of whom left Lower to join NAF on the same day. The staffers had originally joined Lower through its acquisition of Thrive Mortgage.
In response, NAF filed a motion on May 19 to dismiss the case with prejudice, arguing that Lower failed to present specific facts to support claims of trade secret misappropriation or harm under the Defend Trade Secrets Act.
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