Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wells Fargo Securities announced Thursday that it has expanded its residential

mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) platform to provide a full suite of advisory, structuring, research, distribution, and trading services to its residential origination and investing clients and to Wells Fargo Home Mortgage (WFHM).

“Wells Fargo’s dominance in mortgage origination combined with strong investor demand for all types of residential product made this an obvious area to expand within Wells Fargo Securities,” said Tim Mullins, head of

fixed income trading at Wells Fargo. “We are excited to have the in-house capabilities in place to offer these services to our mortgage company in addition to our external originating and investing clients.”

As part of this expansion, the RMBS group has added a number of key hires to oversee the business.

Mike Buttner has been appointed the head of RMBS. A 19-year veteran of Wells Fargo, Buttner was most recently responsible for managing the hedging activities of WFHM’s servicing rights and pipeline/warehouse assets.

Reporting to Buttner are Doug Lucas, head of residential mortgage trading, and Dash Robinson, head of residential mortgage finance structuring & lending. Lucas has more than 20 years’ experience managing residential risk and most recently ran structured products trading in London for Bear Stearns, where his team set up a mortgage company in Europe. Robinson was previously responsible for the execution, surveillance, and restructuring oversight of Wells Fargo’s structured finance transactions.

“Adding seasoned market professionals with deep residential experience has enabled us to quickly expand our RMBS platform,” said Julie Caperton, head of asset backed finance and securitization at Wells Fargo.