A small study [1] of mortgage professionals conducted by Everee [2], a payroll technology company, found that more are in the position of living paycheck to paycheck as the result of inflation, high interest rates, fewer deals, and job uncertainties.
The survey of 314 professionals with varying commission-based jobs in the mortgage industry also found that 31% of respondents plan to leave the industry entirely within the next year, while 15% were unsure what their future in the mortgage industry might be.
According to the survey, competitive pay, faster commission payments, and flexible working options are key contributors towards mortgage professionals' retention and overall satisfaction. However, despite today's real-time, on-demand era, more than 60% of professionals have to wait at least two weeks to get paid, with 22.3% waiting a month, and 11.5% waiting even longer.
Additional key findings include:
- 72.6% of mortgage professionals would choose to work for one company over another simply because they paid commissions faster.
- 65% want to get paid in a week or less but only 40% actually get paid that fast.
When looking specifically at loan officers' responses to the study:
- 38.5% of loan officers are unhappy with how quickly they're paid.
- 82.2% of loan officers would be more likely to continue working for their current employer if they received their commissions within 24 hours.
"We're seeing that mortgage professionals consider the speed of pay to be more important than things like company culture, health benefits, and retirement benefits when deciding where to work," said Brett Barlow [3], CEO of Everee. "When considering that so many of these professionals are living paycheck to paycheck or wanting to leave the industry, we are committed to working with mortgage companies to pay commissions to employees as fast as the same day they close a deal. By doing so, we're giving these employees an opportunity to better support their financial needs, and we're also helping businesses increase retention, protect margins, and attract new talent."