Brian Damico, President and CEO of New Fed Mortgage in Danvers, Mass., was going to be a financial advisor, but was offered the opportunity to run a new, six-person mortgage company in 2000. He accepted the position, but the employees never materialized. That meant he had to learn the business from scratch. But Damico did have a background in residential and commercial real estate, so he knew the business, just not mortgages. Today New Fed Mortgage originates $25 million of loans each month and does retail business in all the New England states, except Vermont as well as New Jersey and Florida.

The Mortgage Leader spoke with Damico about his decision to expand his organization, the types of people he prefers to recruit and an acquisition he's in the process of making.

What type of loans do you specialize in?

Everybody has the same products. Conventional we have really strong rates. We offer Federal Housing Administration, Department of Veteran Affairs of Agriculture and Department loans. We do all of these as products in-house, so we have underwriters that will approve them. Back in the day we would have had to send those out and wait a week or two. But now we control the whole process.

Why have you chosen now to expand New Fed?

Through the years, I never felt we were ready for growth. At one point we had a lot of loan officers, but it was before licenses [were required], and it was a different world. To really put your best foot forward and go for growth, I felt we needed all of the programs to be a full-fledged lender. And we have had all the programs for the last two years, so now we are ready to grow. We made sure we had the right people, in the right places.

How many people have you hired over the past year?

We’ve hired 25 people over the past 12 months, though 17 of them were hired in the last six months. Also, we have grown to six branches, from four, and we are looking to add more branches. It gets our footprint a little larger and we can recruit people where the branches are located and keep trying to build more volume in each branch.

What types of people do you look for when you are recruiting?

Culture is everything. I’ve hired big producers in the past. The question is are they all about themselves? Over time, I’ve gotten good at identifying people where there is a fit. While I wouldn’t automatically say, “No to someone that’s never been in the mortgage business, I love the idea that experienced people bring a book of business and clientele. It makes it easy to grow. It’s a people business, so we always try to recruit the best operations and sales people that we can.

What’s next for the organization?

We plan to open an Internet, or direct to consumer channel. To do that, we are in the middle of purchasing another mortgage company that does business in Illinois, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. This way the channel does not compete with New Fed’s retail branches. We are hiring staff to run that business.