So, on day thirteen of my time at BigFinancialCompany, yesterday, I finally got access to the inter- and intranet and to the loan processing system. After watching people type for two weeks, as well as reading the underwriting manual cover to cover (twice) I thought I was ready, but this piece of software is so dated and clunky that it makes the first generation of Contour (which I thought, until now, was the ugliest piece of mortgage-related software ever) look sleek and impressive.
One of my teammates, the only one who is NOT on vacation this year, helped me when I got myself stuck a couple times, but the end result was one approval, one decline, and one file I suspended because I didn't have enough information to calculate income. (Hello? If you've been on a job for five months, and are paid semi-monthly, you should be able to provide two consecutive paystubs, not two that are a month apart. And if you've owned a rental property for nine years, I'm pretty sure you have some kind of documentation of rental income that goes beyond a handwritten rental agreement that (coincidentally) is also five months old. ) At least, when these things come up, I just have to tell the broker to do their job, not fight with the client. Yay wholesale.
What's really cool is that everyone is helpful and supportive of each other. Yes, on the night before Christmas Eve there was some complaining about workload, but everyone – even the division manager – pitched in to get things closed and finished, and today, even the managers were processing files. Yesterday, when underwriting handed me my first approved loan, I was congratulated for a successful first submission, not just by my own team, but also by the underwriter who'd done the file, who took the time to explain to me how his income came out $0.25 more/month than mine. I love being able to just walk twenty feet over to ask the underwriters a question. And I love that they're willing to answer, explain, and offer advice, just as my teammate gave me a different file-flow structure to make things go faster.
I can't explain more without going way into mortgagese, but, if I had to dive back into corporate America, I'm pretty confident I chose the right waters.