We comment quite regularly on the downsizing across the mortgage industry; IndyMac’s recent layoff of 400 employees being the latest cut-back. With each one the question gets raised, “Where do all the loan officers go?” Well we may have stumbled across the newest destination – car dealerships.  There are no “hard numbers” to back this up; only anecdotal evidence is available to this writer – but a friend of mine that manages a dealership sales team summed up the trend quite nicely with this statement:
“We had 5 interviews last week for sales positions, 4 of them were mortgage loan officers at their last job.”
Again, one dealership, one manager, not exactly a Harris-Interactive poll, but still enough to make you think that loan officers are often little more than salespeople. And as the adage goes, if you can sell – you can sell anything. Apparently we’ll see if it holds water over the next several years. Not that there is anything wrong with selling. Most of my friends are in some kind of sales; and with out sales no business is transacted. Car sales is not an ignoble profession either – so no knock to those honest car salesman out there.
It’s just that the title loan officer conveys (incorrectly) a sense of duty, of trustworthiness, of decision making and well, officer-ness. Police Officer, Military Officer, Loan Officer? I don’t think so. In the end loan officer is nothing more than a haughty title for sales man (or woman). It is an illusion. One who’s veneer has hopefully been thoroughly stripped in the public eye during the media coverage of the market crisis. No sales person is an officer – there is nothing official about their role in the transaction. They are a deliverer of a product by connecting a buyer and a seller. A car salesman is not called an “Automotive Transportation Officer” and a copy salesman is not called a “Digital Imaging and Replication Officer.” A mortgage product sales man shouldn’t be called a Loan Officer; its a gross misrepresentation of the duties and responsibilities of the position.
Loan sales people are necessary – they put people with loans. If they do a good job they are more of a consultant than they are an order-taker. But in the end they are sales people. They are not officers.  “Officer” implies duty (fiduciary and other) and in the mortgage industry the loan officer does not have any duty to anyone but themselves.
There are some loan officers who assume a duty of fiduciary and ethical responsibility for their clients. These are the people that deserve your business. For they truly have your best interests in mind. Everyone else is just out gunning for themselves. The sooner you as a customer realize this the better off you’ll be right from the start.
Step #1: Always, separate the salesmen from those that will assume the duty to protect your best interests. And always choose the latter to work with.
Last 3 posts by Morgan
- Subprime Bananas - June 28th, 2009
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