At a time when some companies are luring top-producing loan officers away from rivals by paying big bonuses, Freedom Mortgage is home-growing its own crops of new mortgage professionals.
Under the Mount Laurel, N.J., lending firm's First Flyer program, college graduates are hired right out of school and put through an intensive, year-long training regimen in all phases of the business. Graduates then decide whether they want to be in sales, processing or some other part of the company.
For Brandyn Lazar, a 24-year-old finance major at Towson University, the choice is sales. "My natural ability is sales," says Lazar, scheduled to graduate from the program in July. "I came across this program and felt it was the best way to start making good money at a young age, right out of college."
Sales is also Maria Hurdle’s choice. "I absolutely love it," says Hurdle, a 25-year-old history major at Rutgers University who started the First Flyer program in June. "I go into work and I'm excited. I leave home and I'm happy and I can see myself in this industry for the long term."
The initial First Flyer class of about 15 people graduated in January, and about 15 more have graduated every five months since then as the program went through its pilot phase. After several refinements, the program has 40 to 50 people coming on board right out of school, both in the spring and fall.
The First Flyer program was conceived by Michael Middleman, a vice president at Freedom Mortgage, who participated in a similar program when he was hired by Ernst & Young in New York.
"We decided as an executive team about a year and a half ago that we wanted to start this program," says Middleman, whose father, Stanley, is Freedom's CEO. "I had been pushing for it ever since joining (Freedom) and seeing the gap in age difference between a lot of our executives and the people who should be loan officers coming in at the entry level."
Middleman figures there's a divergence of about 15 years between the people who came into the mortgage business in the early 2000s before the housing crisis and those who entered it post-crisis.
"I noticed there was this huge age gap as soon as I started working full-time here," says Middleman, who spent seven years — the last three at EY — in public finance before joining the family business in 2014. "I impressed upon the rest of the executive teams that it would be a good idea to start doing something like this and bring new energy into our business."
He describes the First Flyer initiative as like a Big Four accounting firm's apprentice program with "a little bit of a mortgage flare."
Every First Flyer goes through a year's worth of rotations, learning the business from top to bottom, "so they can figure out what they're good at," he says. Besides the sales track, which is the main component, there are tracks for underwriting, IT, processing, analysts and other aspects of the business.
"It's pretty action-packed for every First Flyer who comes in and for the program managers who oversee the entire program," says Middleman, 31.
Middleman declined to say how much the program costs, but he categorizes the expense as "an investment as opposed to a spend."
For the initial six weeks of training, First Flyers are paid but don't do any work. The company also pays for their testing and licensing as well as special events such as off-site workshops and semi-annual town halls, where everyone in the program gathers for a group hug.
Every participant has a coach. For sales, for example, it's usually a sales manager. And each coach works with two First Flyers. There's also what Middleman labels "cross-class collaboration" between the program's four cohorts, led by company executives who provide business updates, counsel participants and lead the coaching infrastructure.
Hundreds of Freedom staffers are heavily involved in the program, he says, and First Flyers will "hear from a lot of our key managers and executives on what their own journeys were like." They'll also "mix it up" with operational managers as they move through the different tracks.
Middleman figures that just 15% of First Flyer hires drop out, usually during the first few weeks.
"Typically those who fall out fall out early because they didn't realize what they are getting themselves into. It's pretty intensive. After three months or so, we haven't really seen much attrition at all," he says. At that point, they tend to find their niche, "an area that they love, which we're very open to."
"A lot of people have found different opportunities within our growing organization, which has worked out really well, not just for them, but for us as well, because it’s helped solidify our infrastructure. A lot of people who came through the sales track become sales coaches or trainers themselves. One of our program managers was a First Flyer last year who now helps oversee the program within our HR infrastructure."
Rutgers graduate Hurdle was drawn to the program because of the opportunities it offered. "I'm not going to lie. Initially, I was, like, 'Oh my goodness, this is intense,'" she says. "But as I started getting more experience and I started getting advice from managers and other loan officers, it definitely feels like I'm at the point where I absolutely love what I’m doing."
Lazar, the Towson finance major, is now a loan officer in the company's joint marketing agreement section, a portfolio retention group which works with servicers and subservicers to refinance their mortgages. He, too, likes what he does.
He was applying for work in New York and Philadelphia, but he didn't really want to go into finance. When he came across the First Flyer program, "I felt this was probably the best way to start making good money at a young age, right out of college," he says. "Quite frankly, it was the highest earning potential I had."
But it wasn't just money that drew him to Freedom. "I joined this to make it a career. I didn't want to bounce around companies. I knew the growth that this company went through and I definitely saw that there was potential to grow. So yes, I am going to stick with it. I like it a lot. I've been considerably successful, I guess, within sales, so I'll stay here."
Both participants believe that their rotations through the company's various departments have helped them be better, more productive employees.
"All of that definitely helped shape my style of loan officer because I learned all the various back-end situations that can take place," says Hurdle. "You can definitely see things that could happen when your loan gets into processing. Just from having that background is helpful now that I'm in sales."
Lazar compares the rotations to baseball's "minor leagues." He says: "Everyone saw how the loan officer position was the majors and what you need to do to get there. You don't just become a loan officer out of nowhere. You need to put in your time, give everyone your attention and learn throughout what you need to do to become a loan officer. It definitely prepared us well."
