Is your loan officer a big talker but couldn’t pass the mortgage exams!
Lawyers pass the BAR exams in order to practice law. 
CPA’s, Accountants and tax attorney’s all pass different tests in order to obtain their designations.
Doctors , Surgeons and dentists pass a multitude of exams in order to practice medicine.
And NOW loan officers must pass extensive exams in order to originate loans!
IS YOUR LOAN OFFICER LICENSED OR JUST REGISTERED?
What is the Difference?
There’s a lot of alphabet soup out there when it comes to registration and licensing. DRE, DOC, NMLS etc. What does it all mean? If a loan officer has their real estate license, does that mean they are LICENSED? Nope! Not under the NMLS !
Effective July 1, 2010 all Mortgage Bankers and Mortgage Brokers Across the country will require their loan originators to be licensed through the NMLS (Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System)
However! Based on an exemption in the laws, the big Interstate Chartered Banks do not require their loan originator working for a big bank such as Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America to be licensed. Currently they only require them to be REGISTERED with the registry.
The S.A.F.E. Act states: The Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008 (the S.A.F.E. Act) requires the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the National Credit Union Administration, and the Farm Credit Administration (collectively, the Agencies) to jointly develop and maintain a Federal registration system for individual employees of Agency-regulated institutions who engage in the business of residential mortgage loan origination. The statute requires these individual mortgage loan originators to be registered with the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry (Registry), a database established previously by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) and the American Association of Residential Mortgage Regulators to support the licensing of mortgage loan originators by the States.
Is your loan officer licensed? You can find out here:
http://www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org/
In order to get LICENSED, loan officers (not working for a Chartered Bank) must go through extensive testing, background and credit report checks etc.
Here is a chart to show the differences between what is involved in getting licensed. Please note, that some Chartered banks require internal background or credit checks as they would ALL employees. This only applies to the NMLS requirements for loan officers.
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.I’ve come across many loan officers that talk a big game. They bad mouth other loan officers, they rip their articles apart, they make it sound as though they are the only game in town. Yet, I’ve recently looked up these bully’s only to find that they were unlicensed and unable to pass the National and state exams.
If you fail, you must wait 30 days to test again, if you fail a second time, you must wait another 30 days, and a third time? You guessed it, you must wait another 30 days. If you fail the 4th time, you must wait to retest and are unable to originate loans for 6 months!
I’ve heard of loan officers that have failed and are somehow still originating loans! How Is this possible? Well it all comes down to enforcement. These loan officers are most likely putting the loan applications in another loan officers name (someone who is licensed) and they are probably working out a commission deal illegally under the table.
So if you have applied for a loan, and the last page of the application is not signed, or is signed by a name you have never heard of? Most likely that loan officer you applied with is not licenced and was unable to pass the tests or background checks.
DO you want to know of your loan officer is licensed?
So, the next time you speak with a loan officer that is talking a big game.
Check to see if they have their NMLS license and make your own decision!
NMLS# 254430
