In the 1950s, commercial banks entered into the credit card business. Home mortgage loans, as we know them today, are a fairly recent product born of the failures of the mortgage finance system during the Great Depression. Clearly, radical change was needed.
One of the most significant responses to this need was creation of the Federal Housing Administration, which instituted a new type of mortgage loan - the long-term, fixed-rate, self-amortizing mortgage - which became the model that transformed conventional home mortgage lending. A whole industry - thrift institutions - grew up around this one product.