Four senior-level sales executives have been added to the roster of Anchor Loans as part of the company’s aggressive growth plans after battling employment challenges in the loan industry.
The new account executives include Tony Charles, a former branch manager at HSBC Bank; Rod Wilson, a property redevelopment expert; Troy Ellis, a commercial real estate financier; and David Armstrong, a mortgage and real estate executive that founded First California Mortgage Co.
Each of the account executives has more than 20 or 30 years of experience within their respective industries.
Their additions are flanked by the expanded role of Anchor’s Vice President of Construction and Development Matt Ediger, who will focus on the origination of new construction, fix and flip and rental loans across the country.
Although Anchor’s expansion project has so far been successful, the hiring spree component was no easy feat according to Andrew Jewett, the chief strategy officer at Anchor Loans.
“What in the past has taken 30 to 60 days to hire a new sales team has now taken upwards of 90 to 180 days. The timelines are very long,” Jewett said. “There’s a lot of demand out there for talented salespeople and talented operations people, and you have to cast a very wide net to catch the people that you want to get.”
A significant amount of capital has been flooded into the residential mortgage industry in the last decade, according to Jewett, triggering a demand for talent that is made more difficult by employees staying with successful companies.
“Very talented people get locked in, they have good business and they’re printing a good paycheck,” Jewett said.” An extra layer of the employment challenges that Anchor has to contend with during its expansion is the fact that it does business with experienced real estate investors that require equally experienced loan employees.
A way of handling that expectation, according to Jewett, is finding people who are knowledgeable about Anchor products and then teaching them about sales as opposed to hiring employees with sales backgrounds that then learn the product. Anchor’s products include bridge loans for property purchases, new construction loans and rental loans.