If you are an MLO looking to change employers and are currently sponsored by a Mortgage Broker Business or Lender, pay attention to these issues.
- You must give good notice, and that is usually in your employment agreement. If it is NOT, then reasonableness applies. Which to me means 30 days written notice to insure good customer service and some continuity of planning for both parties. Yes, its an “at will” deal usually, but a contract can change that.
- Your pipeline and your work in progress belongs to your current sponsor, not you. If you sabotage your sponsor’s pipeline, it is theft.
- Any leads you obtained while working for your sponsor, belong to your sponsor. So you can’t “take your electronic rolodex” with you unless you ask, and your current sponsor agrees.
- Don’t have your assistant quit before you, go to work for a new sponsor, and work leads you steal from your prior sponsor. The regulators have seen this before and you are not fooling anyone or avoiding liability.
- This is important. The person that hires you is equally liable if they know even a scintilla of the facts regarding where you got your leads, or if they allow you to bring purloined files over via the “assistant” ploy. Now, you have a Dodd Frank, conspiracy, and theft issue.
- Many regulators will pursue not only the dishonest MLO but also the new sponsor that takes them in.
- Notice I said dishonest? This is a moral turpitude/fraud issue. Means you will be calling me to try and help you save your license.
Just have a conscience, and if you change sponsors, do it with class and do it the way you would want to be treated. Or else. If any of you don’t believe me, I can send you an excerpt from a regulator Administrative Complaint.
Nelson A. Locke, Esq.
800-656-4584
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