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For the Top Producers, many say a key to success involves taking that initial conversation with a potential borrower beyond the rate question.

Vanessa Drucker is a New York-based journalist, with an interest in workplace, management and employment issues. A former Wall Street attorney, she now writes about these topics, as well as global capital markets, for clients like UBS and Investment&Pensions Europe. She has worked extensively on marketing for TIAA-Cref, dealing with retirement and pensions. She formerly wrote a regular workplace column for Financial Times online.

Mortgage lenders are preparing for the biggest wave of delinquencies in history. If the plan to buy time works, they may avert an even worse crisis: Mass foreclosures and mortgage market mayhem.

The worsening economy brought on by the coronavirus pandemic has big banks rethinking who they will lend to.

The 2020 countdown of the National Mortgage News Top Producers list continues by featuring the loan officers ranked 26 to 100.

Bank employment of mortgage loan officers rose slightly last year, but that was before the coronavirus spread and resulted in social distancing measures that raised questions about broader employment prospects.

Finance of America Reverse agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle allegations that a company it acquired violated the False Claims Act for loans submitted for Federal Housing Administration insurance in 2010.

Digital banks outscored brick-and-mortar banks in a recent J.D. Power study of customer satisfaction. However, the survey pointed to shortcomings in call center services, which are in high demand during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Williston Financial Group accounted for a pandemic in business continuity plans, and it helped some, but COVID-19 was a much larger scale than it anticipated.

Brad Finkelstein is the originations editor of National Mortgage News. While he covers the entire process, Brad's specialty is loan production and its associated parts from lead development through secondary marketing.

Brad joined National Mortgage News in 1990 after working on the North Hempstead/Northeast Queens desk for This Week publications on Long Island and then as associate editor of the Airport Press, covering both passenger and cargo stations at the New York area airports. While part of the NMN family, Brad was the editor of its wholesale publications Broker Magazine and Origination News, and in those roles and now in his current role, coordinates the annual Top Producers survey. Brad is a past president of the New York Financial Writers Association.

• Awards — Among the awards he has won was as regional finalist for the Azbees in 2021 for Online - Online Breaking News Coverage for work in stories on the coronavirus pandemic's impact on the mortgage industry along with Paul Centopani and Bonnie Sinnock. The following year he was part of the regional finalist for Online - Online Single Topic Coverage by a Team for coverage of industry layoffs along with Bonnie Sinnock, Andrew Martinez and Maria Volkova.
• Education — He has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a minor in Urban Studies from Queens College. He also attended the graduate journalism program at New York University..
• Experience — In 1989, Brad was a reporter on the North Hempstead/Northeast Queens desk for This Week publications on Long Island, with primary coverage of the Great Neck and Little Neck areas. Between January and May 1990, he was associate editor of the Airport Press, covering both passenger and cargo stations at the New York area airports. Brad joined National Mortgage News in May 1990.
• Journalistic affiliations — Brad is a member of the New York Financial Writers Association, where he also served on the board of directors and as an officer of the organization for four years, culminating as president in 2004. Since then he has served on a number of NYFWA committees, including membership, Financial Follies and nominations.

Twitter: @NMNBrad