"To quote 'Jaws', we need a bigger boat"
With borrower interest in non-prime products on the upswing, Citadel Servicing Corp. is growing to keep pace.
“To quote Jaws, ‘we need a bigger boat’ – so we’re building a bigger boat,” said Will Fisher, senior vice president of sales and marketing for CSC.
“We’re on a hiring tear. This past month we brought on about 16 people and we’re looking to bring on another 20 or 30 people in the next two months,” Fisher said. “It’s not just sales or sales operations – it’s accountants, loan shippers, servicing, etcetera.”
Fisher said that with Citadel’s business booming, the company is upping staff to keep up with rising borrower demand.
“This past month – especially the last two weeks – were our biggest origination weeks ever,” he said. “We’re seeing almost 100 loans a day. Normally we see 30 to 40. To see this volume upsurge, it shows which way the market is going. I believe brokers and sellers see CSC as the expert and only innovator in the space right now.”
Being the leader and solely focused on non-prime, CSC offers many perks to its employees – satisfying work, stability, upward advancement, and the chance to do well when the company does well through a profit-sharing program for all operations staff.
“We offer a lot of things other companies don’t,” said Fisher. “Our CEO has an old-school mentality, so we have a yearly company performance bonus. It’s a profit-sharing bonus. Last year we doled out a pretty nice chunk of change. Some operations personnel made an additional 20%.”
Fisher said that Citadel has been growing steadily for years, but with rising rates making non-prime more attractive than ever, that growth has accelerated recently.
“For us, it’s always been about steady, smart growth. We’ve been in growth mode since 2013, but now with the market moving in our direction, we’re becoming a bit more aggressive in our hiring,” he said. “However, we’re still executing to plan, which means we know where we’re going and what our growth needs to look like. We know what we want to fund and we know it’s sustainable.”
That sustainability, Fisher said, makes CSC a place where mortgage professionals can spend an entire career.
“We don’t see ourselves as a company that’s susceptible to swings in the market,” he said. “Our type of lending, executed correctly, doesn’t go in and out of vogue with the rates. If you’re looking to be a lifer, you can do that at Citadel. We intend to follow the rules of Dodd-Frank and keep innovating and leading the space. We’re going to be around for the long haul.”
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