Senior leadership need street-level experience
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How many times has a loan officer or branch manager seen a new policy or procedure handed down from corporate that has nothing to do with how business gets done in the field?
Or worse, they suffer financially because that brilliant new idea or well-intentioned roll-out from headquarters ends up limiting, not lifting their production.
Often, the main reason this disconnect occurs is that the organization’s senior leadership lacks street- level experience. They simply haven’t walked in the shoes of a loan officer, processor or underwriter long enough, or at all, to develop the instincts and reflexes that it takes to close loans.
At New American Funding, our senior retail leaders have all come up through the ranks. We speak the field’s language because we’ve been there. We know all the ins-and-outs of a 1003 loan application and the first and last places to look for potential minefields that can blow up even the best-looking deals.
Because of our senior leadership’s retail experience, we value every suggestion we receive from the field. In our view, no “ask” is ever too big or too small. In fact, we have a theme running through the company that goes, “If you want to grow, we want to know.”
When an idea from the field moves from suggestion to solution, we don’t turn to off-the-shelf fixes. We build them internally and organically. That’s how we’ve built our innovative technology and marketing and our industry-leading platform of products. By listening and thinking like our people who are bringing in the business, we believe we can continue to improve the mortgage experience for not only them, but also their clients and partners.
As examples, when our busy, multi-tasking branch managers asked for help in recruiting the best loan originators in the business, we built our own internal recruiting team. Similarly, for our loan originators who wanted to do more builder business or for our loan originators who wanted to do more condo business, we built custom platforms for them. We were listening.
The value to our loan originators is clear. They can be confident that they will receive all the resources they need to close more business. They also can be certain that they work for a company that strongly supports both their voice and vocation, and where their potential is unlimited.
