Foundation Financial Group, the Atlanta-based company that recently opened a regional sales center in Dallas and earlier this year one in Rochester, N.Y., is in the process of adopting a more traditional retail branching strategy.
This is “a slightly different business model than what we’ve got right now, with more of a retail look and feel. There is a pretty large hole in the marketplace for that right now and it is going to allow us to work on our branding,” said chief executive Mark Boyer.
This strategy, he believes, will help the company get its name out there and to help it service its customers better. It wants to be in the locations where its customers are and “give that hometown feel back to them,” he continued. These offices will also help Foundation get to know the local markets better.
There are five locations on the table right now, with three expected to open by August. Those are in Indianapolis, Dayton, Ohio, and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul. The structure of these new offices will be “as far away from a net branch” as can be, Boyer said.
Foundation is seeing an opportunity to move in this direction because a lot of the larger players are leaving local areas. There used to be a large retail presence in the mortgage business, where the consumer can be driving down the road and drop in to his or her local office, he explained, declaring, “Now there is a big hole.”
Its core business will remain its seven regional centers. But, Boyer said, “you can’t put a large center in every state. It’s just not feasible, it doesn’t make sense. We still wanted to be able to give better service to people in some of the smaller states,” as well as recruit new employees to the company. Its goal is to have two locations in every state.
For now, it wants to get the first five offices up and running and get the expected bugs worked out, Boyer said. Then it will move into other states.
It is looking for people who have a sales background but who are not currently in the mortgage business.
“We have a lot of success bringing people into the industry and training them, teaching them the business, teaching them the right way to do things,” he said.
