Breaking the billion-dollar ceiling

The nation's number one loan officer shares how he does it

Breaking the billion-dollar ceiling

To say that the past two years have been busy for mortgage professionals is an understatement. The refinance boom spurred by the global pandemic sparked originators and their pipelines back to life. Many loan officers even reached new heights in terms of loan volume.

Currently, Guaranteed Rate’s top loan officer Shant Banosian holds the record for funding a whopping $2 billion in total origination volume at record speed in 2021.

In the latest MPA TV episode, MPA news editor Richard Torne caught up with Banosian to find out more about how he managed to stay as America’s number one originator for the past six years and the valuable lessons he’s learned along the way.

“I think the secret sauce is a couple of things. It’s not just one thing,” Banosian said. “One I’d say is extremely like just a dedication to your craft in terms of just hard work and discipline, especially when I first got going. It was being on 24/7 and, whether you like it or not or whether people like to hear that or not, that’s just what it was like. I was willing to do things that other people weren’t willing to do in order to establish my business. And that meant being on at nights, weekends, like literally all the time. I can honestly say that, throughout my career, I’ve outworked my competition for sure, purely just from an effort standpoint.”

However, Banosian made it clear that there is only so much you can do  as a standalone originator despite all the hard work and best efforts. If you’re just a salesperson, you have a ceiling, he said.

“How I’ve consistently broken through the ceiling is I’ve tried to act like a CEO and running a business and not just focusing on sales or leads. It’s been focused on all the things - sales, operations, business development, marketing, branding, customer retention. I know that sounds like a cliché, but the reason that cliché is there is because it works. You have to work on your business and move it forward.”

You can learn more about Banosian’s winning strategies by watching the full interview here: How can originators keep their pipelines full?