With the average age of a loan officer between 46 and 47 now, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, we only have another decade or so to recruit and train the next generation of mortgage originators. Unfortunately, getting Millennials into this business has been tough. In studies performed back as far as 2014, a third of millennials expected to be living a bank-free existence by now.

How can lenders effectively recruit millennials in this environment? And how can mortgage lenders do it when this group isn’t even buying homes until they are nearly 30 years old?

Looking for the perfect fit

Dexter Gregory is a millennial who had considered entering the real estate business before his father, a mortgage loan originator, pointed him toward the mortgage business. He first approached a mortgage staffing company. “I had 12 interviews in eight days,” he said. “They were each between 60 and 90 minutes long and they all ended the same way. All were looking for the finished product but didn't want to put in the work or investment for new Loan Officers.”

Gregory was looking for a company willing to help him get his business going. “It was tough. I was tempted to quit,” he recalls. “But I remember thinking ‘If I give up now, this is all for nothing.’”

In December 2019, Gregory joined Sun West Mortgage Company. Within a few months, the pandemic hit, and things got crazy in the mortgage business. Fortunately, Gregory had found a mentor in Jeff Toomire. He worked alongside Toomire until he gained confidence and his volume grew. By year’s end, Gregory had made the President’s Club.

“Sun West is great. I joined them in a year where I got to witness what the company is like when they are firing on all cylinders, before COVID struck,” Gregory said.

After the COVID-19 pandemic began, lenders started having a hard time keeping up with their best loan officers. Many became frustrated and moved to other firms, but Gregory realized that the same problems were on both sides of the fence. There were no greener pastures and so he held fast. It was a good decision for two reasons:

• First, Sun West has an excellent workflow, system, and worldwide team that allows the company to work on loans overnight while Loan Officers sleep, keeping the deals moving toward closing, he said.
• Second, in mid-2020, Ty Kern, Executive Managing Director, National Production for Sun West, launched a new program designed to help every Loan Officer in the company double their personal loan production.

“Given the choice of paying a premium to recruit people away from another lender, who would then have to be retrained to originate, according to our company’s standards, we opted to grow our internal team,” Kern said.

Sun West’s Loan Officer Reinvestment Act was based on providing coaching and additional training to each loan officer on the team. Investing in human support in the form of marketing, training, and administrative assistance, with an emphasis on good mentoring, helped everyone in the organization make the important shift from ‘manufacturing’ loans to building relationships. The results speak for themselves.