Angelo Mozilo, chief executive of beleaguered Countrywide Financial Corp., said Tuesday that the lender was making progress in adjusting to the harsh new realities of the home mortgage market, the Los Angeles Times reports.

“With pain comes opportunity,” Mozilo said at an investment conference here hosted by Bank of America Corp., which recently invested $2 billion in Countrywide.

One opportunity that Mozilo sees is for Countrywide to expand its banking operations. He announced plans to double the number of Countrywide financial centers in the next few months to more than 200.

The centers, run by only one or two employees, are inside Countrywide mortgage branches. The deposits they accumulate would help fund the lending operation, which has been starved for capital since the liquidity crisis began this summer.

Mozilo said flatly that “we are out of the sub-prime business,” referring to loans made to borrowers without sterling credit or steady income. Like most lenders, Countrywide has curtailed such loans amid rising defaults.

In subsequent remarks, he appeared to qualify that comment by saying Countrywide would continue to make a limited number of sub-prime loans that could be sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-chartered wholesalers.

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