Update: Mortgage Loan Officer Study

The study to determine predictable behavioral patterns in successful loan officers has taken a couple of unexpected turns. As with any turn, you slow down and pay attention a bit better. In particular, many people have thought the study would be more about best practices in successful loan officers than behavioral patterns.

Best practices are very very important and certain best practices transcend all organizations and markets while other practices are dependent upon the types of business and the people involved.

That's where this study comes in; the people involved. This study is about the people FIRST. The past two weeks has been an education for me as I've talked to a number of readers who have called and emailed about the study and its purpose. This was a blind spot for me because I have been using assessments and job-fit patterns for years and had not considered how this was not something on everyone's mind as it was with me.

We've started running the assessments on selected loan officers and we are continuing to talk to others. The selection process is dependent upon an LO's number of years in business, overall success, and relative fundings. The selection process does not mandate that we have only high volume loan officers in the control group. We fully expect to find some loan officers that produce a fraction of the loans as their counterparts, but yet have many of the same behavioral characteristics. The study will also include long time career loan officers that produce very few loans. All of this together helps us determine the proper patterns and how these results assist in the right job-fit and training recommendations.

As to the best practices, because of the wide-spread interest this could be another project we pick up though there are other companies already engaged in such.

Thanks to those who have expressed interest in the project and the results. Though the behaivoral science guys are the experts and bring the information together, I can see some common traits in the assessment reports we've run so far. It is going to be exciting to see where this information leads us.

To that end....