The average hiring cost in the USA is 4425 USD, where hiring a loan officer can exceed 10 grand USD. A smart loan officer can take your mortgage company to its knees, and losing them can also drag you down. After a certain time, your loan officers’ faces become familiar to a lot of customers, and they create trustworthiness, and a sudden change can take your customer to another company along with the loan officers.
Why Loan Officer Retention Matters?
Retaining a loan officer is a great move for any mortgage company if they are performing well or have been working for your organization for a long time.
Let’s see how retention matters:
- A hiree can not operate at capacity in their first 12 weeks
- Recruiting a new loan officer can increase the cost by up to 10000 USD
- The loan officer recruitment process can take a long time because of pre-screening, interviews, circular job posts, networking, etc.
- Retention of a loan officer can keep your existing customers sticking with your company, while releasing them may cause loss.
Those are the reasons retention of a loan officer matters a lot for a mortgage company, rather than going through the process of recruiting a loan officer.
Core Retention Strategies for Loan Officers
Retention of a loan officer takes a lot of effort, and it brings more benefit than you give to them. So remember to treat them the way they deserve because they are a normal human being like you, not a robot. So, unnecessary pressure and an impractical target can ruin your team.
Create Clear Career Pathways
Once you have described career opportunities and facilities in your company, the pathway will be clear for a loan officer to understand how far they can fly in their professional career. You need to make them see a better career in your company by achieving a practical goal. Every employee wants to grow in their professional career, so loan officers also want it. Once they feel that hard work will take them to a promotion or give them a senior post, then half the job is done because they will start putting effort into their own work.
Establish Performance-based Compensation That Values Quality
You should not be a one-eyed man to someone who is close to you. Set a parameter to measure performance and reward them by fixing a practical target, and whoever achieves that gets a reward or an incentive. This kind of action keeps loan officers motivated and prevents them from switching to another company as long as their hard work is paying off.
Provide Ongoing Professional Development and Training
Sometimes your best performer also has bad days and can face downtime in performance. It’s your responsibility to keep them updated through personal development sessions and professional training. Your loan officer will stay with you if they get enough personal development and training to see their self-development in the area of technical skills, like
- Financial analysis
- Underwriting
- Understanding loan documentation
- Compliance
- Soft skills such as client communication
- Negotiation
- Sales techniques
To train them, you can use several methodologies or frameworks, such as:
- Blended learning
- Mentorship
- Active learning
- Practical application
Those are really effective for a mortgage company. As you put effort into keeping your loan officers sticking with you, they will also feel developed and thankful with you once they start getting those benefits. In addition, regular development sessions and training create a natural bonding among all officers and the company, which leads to a better sales team of loan officers.
Leverage Technology to Remove Friction and Support Productivity
We are now living in the artificial intelligence generation, so depending on just traditional processes will not be enough to keep you alive in the competitive market, and it impacts your loan officers’ performance as well if they are not getting the help of automation and technology support. Software and tools that can be used to improve the workflow and performance of loan officers are:
- Loan processing system
- Mortgage CRM software
- Mortgage and loan management software
- Digital mortgage platforms
- AI and automation tools
- eClosing and eSigning solutions
Those are the common technologies and software support that can help a loan officer and reduce friction in the workflow. It is a must to say that you can win nowadays without the help of technology.
Recognize and Celebrate Success Meaningfully
Recognition for an employee’s success publicly is very important because they deserve to be applauded in an open space. As a result, not only does that particular worker or loan officer get motivated, but also other officers get inspired to work harder to achieve something recognizable. You celebrate a loan officer’s success by:
- Arranging a meeting with a round of applause
- A simple or handy gift
- A small incentive for success, separate from the fixed incentive
- Dinner or office party
Or maybe you have a better idea to celebrate your success meaningfully. Those are the steps you can take to retain your loan officer in your company for the long term.
In addition, you can praise someone to write their name on the Hall of Fame board, such as: best cold calling script for a loan officer, written by xyz. That type of recognition keeps loan officers motivated.
Foster Teamwork, Culture, and Work-life Balance
Teamwork, culture, and work-life balance are three different aspects of an office, but they are related to each other and impact an employee like a loan officer. Let’s see how in the discussion below.
Work-life balance: This is the most important part of a loan officer’s job because a loan officer’s job is not easy, so they go through stress and difficult situations. After working hours, they need to rest and family time to refresh their mind, and that is why you should not text them at midnight or off time, so keep them 24/7 engaged. Work-life imbalance makes a loan officer leave their organization.
Teamwork: Just being together in the same organization or under the same roof is not referred to as teamwork. It is like helping each other and working under a single project, participating in different roles by combining tasks and responsibilities. Teamwork makes things easier and gives relief to loan officers.
Culture: This culture is referred to as office culture, not traditional culture. How your one loan officer behaves with others, such as a senior loan officer’s communication style to a junior officer. Avoiding office politics like spreading false rumors, talking behind someone’s back, etc., if you create a better office culture, your loan officers will not leave you for simple reasons.
So, if you want to retain your loan officer, then keeping a better office or work environment becomes essential for you.
Implementation Roadmap
- Audit your current retention metrics: You need to check your current retention process performance and make a decision accordingly.
- Survey your loan officers: Create a blind poll for improvement, satisfaction, and dissatisfaction, with anonymous votes or complaints.
- Prioritize quick wins: Start with an improvement that is easy to implement but has a huge impact.
- Roll out long-term initiatives: Methods that impact in the very long term are not for the loan officer’s environment, so remove them and build something that pays your loan officer in the immediate term.
- Measure and adapt: Track progress and adjust strategies based on results and feedback.
Conclusion
Retaining your loan officers is not just about advantage; it is about purpose, support, and growth. By investing in their success, you are investing in the future of your business. Start with these strategies, and you will build a team that is loyal, motivated, and ready to succeed.
