Loan Officer Training: The Two Most Important Skills to Master

Becoming a loan officer goes way beyond having a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree or relevant postgraduate study courses. It requires a vast array of talents learned through on-the-job training management. Aside from the extensive student classwork that is mandatory to pursue a career in the loan business, a person must also possess good people skills in order to be successful in this particular career. For those interested in becoming a loan officer or mortgage loan originator this article is certainly something you should peruse in order to get a more solid understanding of two of the most important skills to master in order to be a successful loan officer.

Obviously, as mentioned above, there are a number of important skills you’re required to have in order to reach a high level of success as a loan officer, but according to experts in the field two skills stand out above the rest. This article will explain what those two skills are and why they are the most important to master during your loan officer training and career.

What Does a Loan Officer Do?

In order to accurately explain what two skills are the most important to a loan officer, it is first necessary to quickly explain exactly what a loan officer does. For those who are unaware, a loan officer is basically someone who has a rather extensive knowledge base of the various types of loans financial institutions can provide to individuals and businesses. These include, but aren’t limited to, loans regarding mortgages, business, car, and college tuition loans.

People looking to secure a loan from a bank or other type of financial institution usually require the services of a loan officer in order to see if the particular loan fits into individuals or businesses unique financial situation and they then help determine the applicant’s ability to repay that loan. There are certainly a lot more things that a loan officer does, but those are simply the basics needed for understanding the purpose of this article.

Relationship Building

Now that we’ve outlined what a loan officer does, it’s time to move on to the two most important skills any loan officer should strive to master in order to reach the pinnacle of success in this profession. The first skill I’m going to talk about is relationship building. After researching this topic with many other successful loan officers, I found that many of the professionals in the field believe that having the ability to build strong relationships is one of the most important skills a loan officer should master.

This is rather interesting as it’s not necessarily something that can be taught in a classroom setting. Of course, you can hone your relationship building skills through role-playing exercises, but that only scratches the surface of what it takes to garner long-lasting relationships with banks and businesses that will be seeking out your services as a loan officer. With that being said, in order to work on your relationship building skills, you must show potential customers that you are dedicated and ultimately able to close loan deals with your customer’s best interests in mind. This will show clients and customers that you’re not simply out to make a quick buck from their particular loan, but also want to make sure that they are happy with the deal as well.

Knowing how to successfully build solid business relationships can be done by simply showing that you can get the deal done where both sides are happy. This will secure good working relationships with various financial institutions because after seeing how good you are at your job they will then refer other clients to you. So, basically, the better you are at handling loans with a particular client the more opportunities will arise.

Customer Service

The second most important skill to master in order to become a successful loan officer is to practice and provide extraordinary customer service to your clients. Providing a high level of customer service will not only allow you build great and long-lasting relationships with clients but also will help build a solid level of trust with clients making both parties jobs much easier.

Practicing great customer service, similar to the relationship building skill, is not something that can be easily taught or learned. It basically comes down to whether or not you truly want to help people even if they’re not the nicest or most helpful client. The best loan officers will treat potential customers with the same level of respect no matter how they are treated in return. In addition to treating everyone with a high level of respect, it’s also important to understand that good customer service comes down to going the extra mile in order to make your customers feel like they’re in good hands with you.

Constant and respectful communication is important in order to keep the customer up-to-date and informed during all of the steps in the loan process. A great tool for this is a mortgage CRM. You’ll also want to make sure that you’re very timely in your responses to customer questions and your responses should have a friendly tone in order to make them feel more comfortable throughout this somewhat stressful and complicated process. People who are looking to secure a loan from you will more commonly than not hire and then recommend folks who they are comfortable doing business with even if the specific loan deal they are asking for isn’t the best option they have on the table. Situations such as this really show how far good customer service goes in the loan business. If someone is still willing to work with you over another loan officer, even if their deal is better than yours, shows how much power good customer service really has.

Conclusion

As mentioned above, there are numerous skills that are important to acquire as a loan officer, but without a doubt, the two most crucial are the ability to build relationships and provide a high level of customer service. Treating people well and showing that you have their best interests at heart will certainly allow you to reach a high level of success in the loan business.