NEW YORK, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- Countrywide Financial Corp., the largest U.S. home-mortgage lender, is expected to announce plans to reduce its work force over the next three months by 10,000 to 12,000 jobs, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday on its website.

The company also expects that its loan originations in 2008 will be about 25 percent lower than this year. 

The job cuts may be smaller if the market improves, company officials were quoted as saying.

The collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the United States has punished lenders across the nation.

Earlier in the day, IndyMac Bancorp Inc., the second-biggest U.S. mortgage company, said it plans to cut 10 percent of its workforce and lower the dividend as housing sales falter and home-loan defaults climb.

IndyMac expects to eliminate about 1,000 jobs over the next several months and slice its dividend in half to 25 cents a share, the Pasadena, California-based company said in a statement.