Countrywide Financial Corp, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, said on Thursday its mortgage fundings slid 17 percent in August from a year earlier to $34 billion on the housing slowdown and credit tightening in the mortgage market.

Countrywide said average daily mortgage loan application volume for the month fell 12 percent from a year before to $2.3 billion.

Shares of Countrywide are down some 60 percent this year amid a meltdown in the market for risky subprime mortgages. Countrywide plans to cut as many as 12,000 jobs, and analysts say there could be more cuts on top of that figure, given that the lender hired some 7,000 people this year.

Countrywide's mortgage loan pipeline was $52 billion at the end of August, compared to $64 billion for the same period last year.

(Reporting by Christian Plumb)

Mortgage