Lending Leaders: Voices of The Industry – Featuring Daniel Sa of NFM Lending

Hosted by OMBA Executive Director Rich Swerbinsky and OMBA Engagement Director Heidi Belnay, Lending Leaders: Voices of the Industry is a monthly conversation with some of the most prominent and forward-thinking leaders in mortgage lending.

This episode features special guest Daniel Sa, President of the Great Lakes Division at NFM Lending. This conversation dives into timely issues shaping housing, finance, and community development, while spotlighting the experiences and perspectives of executives making an impact. 

From market trends and regulatory shifts to innovation, leadership, and the future of lending, this series gives listeners direct access to authentic conversations with the people driving change in the industry.

Originally aired live on August 27, 2026.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:09

Good afternoon everyone. Rich Swarbinski with the Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association. Uh we'll give everybody just a few moments to get logged in for the live, and then we'll go ahead and get started. And if you're listening to this on pod or YouTube, I I always forget to mention at the beginning when everybody's listening, we do these live, ohiomba.org. You can put faces with names, and uh yeah, everything we do uh, you know, on these pods, um, we do live on on video cast. So, and again, you can go to ohiomba.org to sign up for the live version of live and free.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

So you can sign up for free to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

And free, which doesn't suck, yeah. So all right, let's go ahead and get into it. My name is Rich Swarbinski, I'm the executive director of the Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association. This is Lending Leaders Voices of the Industry. Uh, this is a monthly series that uh Heidi and I do where we, you know, kind of spotlight and feature an OMBA member company and a leader within that company, really making things happen uh in the industry. And uh hopefully our our members get a chance to to learn a little bit from them. So and uh my co-host, uh Heidi Belnay. Heidi, good to see you.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Hi, good to see you. I'm excited to have Daniel here today with us.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yeah, and our guest, our guest is Daniel Sa. He runs uh NFM Lending's Great Lakes Division out of Columbus. And when people ask me, you know, and I run the LMBA, who's the biggest mortgage lender in Columbus, Ohio? The answer is NFM lending. And nobody would answer that. That is like bar trivia stumper if you're in Ohio. And it's mostly because of this guy. And I'm I'm super excited to get into the conversation. Uh Daniel, welcome to the show and and thanks for taking some time out of your busy schedule.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Uh, thank you. I I I appreciate it. Thanks for being thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Of course. All right, let's get into it. So, my first question is what's actually working for producers right now and what's something a lot of people are still doing that stopped working years ago?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

You know, what I have found that that actually works, and and and this is really interesting because most people don't think of it this way, and then they'll take, you know, a deeper look into what is actually necessary to win, right? So, what I my belief is that in order for you to win, you have to have a deep understanding of the high leverage points of the overall customer journey and overall partner journey. So, by the way, that by itself, most people don't really think of it that way. Um, secondly, you know, what it actually works is if you actually have a true operating standard, right, that helps differentiate and helps separate you from your competitors in key parts of the customer journey that you have the ability to compete. Number one, right? And then the same goes for the referral partner journey. And then what is not working right now is just bad execution, right? The market stopped rewarding bad execution, right? Uh, when things are easy, right, and rates are low and business is falling from the sky, you know, anyone uh can take some market share, right? Anybody can stumble into transactions and and uh you know uh the market being really good overcompensates for bad execution. But when the market is actually tight and perhaps sometimes even shrinking, right, every little detail of how you execute on the high leverage points of the customer journey is a reason for you to either win the business or lose the business. And having an operating model and operating system that addresses all of those leverage points is what, in my opinion, can win at scale.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

It makes sense being proactive rather than reactive.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Yes, absolutely. Uh obviously, there's a lot into that answer, right? Yes. Uh, but but it's it's sort of like the overall you know guidance here.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

And Daniel, high leverage points of the customer journey. Like, give a couple examples of uh, you know, like exactly you know what you're talking about there.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Yeah, so we can talk a little bit about the high leverage points, and then we can even talk a little bit about what the actual operating standard is. But but the high leverage points, and let's just start on the you know, on the overall customer journey. Uh, and most people, just so you know, Rich, I'm gonna be discussing, I'm gonna be sharing these with you. Some of some of these may even surprise you, right? So, so in the customer journey, the first step uh that we've identified as being a high leverage point is the pre-referral. So most people don't think of pre-referral even being up to grabs or up to competition, right? So there's a I'm just gonna go through the leverage points and then I we can go back if you want and we can talk a little bit about them. But but as far as the customer journey and what we really focus on installing the right behaviors for is the pre-referral and then the lead referral, and then the intake, and then the consultation, and then the contract transition, right? And then beyond that, it's easy, right? It's more operational, right? And then there's the post-closing where you can kind of close the loop on getting more referrals and so forth. But the initial ones are are those that I just shared with you right now. And most people don't even think about competing until it gets to the consultation. And the goal is to win before you even get there.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

And I think what you're saying is you got to get to customers before they even get to a realtor.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Not necessarily. Uh, we still like, you know, we you know, keep in mind, we, as you mentioned earlier on the call, we do have the highest market share in Central Ohio, which is a highly competitive market, as you know. Uh, and and we we, you know, we're we're we're really proud of this, and and even because you know, those that we compete against are incredible companies, right? These are formidable businesses that have done extremely well uh and and and we're just doing better, and because and it's all because of the execution. So we're not a direct-to-consumer uh company, we really focus uh on purchase transactions. And as we know, you know, purchase transactions are highly dominated by uh real estate agents and builders, and and and still at this time, you know, customers do really listen to their uh real estate agent advice, right? So when I talk about when I discuss you know the pre-referral, sure, that could be a direct-to-consumer angle, but that's not necessarily our our goal. Our goal is to make sure that the referral partner understands how to properly refer us in the first place. So, how is the referral partner trained over time on the right way and the wrong way of referring? And that can be installed by several different behaviors. One is when you, you know, just by providing a great experience to the client and making sure the client is providing feedback to the realtor on a consistent basis, the realtor begins to understand where you're really good at and what the clients are saying about you, and they begin referring people based upon, hey, I refer Daniel because this is what I hear from clients that work with Daniel, right? And then they will also have uh the scenarios where, you know, the realtors just default to a specific way on how they refer, right? Typically it'll be something along the lines of like, hey, uh, I need you to get a pre-approval, call this lender. Or here's a list of lenders, you know, go see who is going to give you the best terms and let me know who you choose. Now, if that's how you're being referred as a loan officer, that's not a good way to start. And a lot of times you're putting yourself in a bad position before you even talk to the customer, right? So if you can fix that, that's going to have tremendous impact on the overall conversion, right? If the realtor is referring to the loan, the loan officer is saying, hey, uh, call, call Johnny. The reason I say this is because every client that I refer to, Johnny, has a great experience, and Johnny does a great job setting our clients up for success and answering any questions they may have. You know, uh, so Johnny will give you a call, right? Something along those lines is much better than, hey, here's a here's Johnny's phone number. You know, call him to get a pre-approval. Yep. So that's that's just one small example of how you can differentiate before the competition even starts.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

And then that feeds into then your kind of stated higher level standard of service, right? Working with those partners proactively before they're even meeting with potential home buyers and you know, letting them know like that's where those two tie together.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

The standard of service is the most important. The standard of service is how you operate in every key leverage point of the transaction or the customer journey experience or the referral partner experience. These are the principles upon which you live for and you live by, right? And most loan officers don't have that at all, right? It's all it's all just like the industry doesn't have a lack of information. Information is available everywhere, it has a lack of execution. The reason for that is people know what they have to do, but they don't practice the execution or they don't form an operating standard on what they're going to execute when. Okay, with 45 loan officers, right? This is the Great Lakes division, NFM, this is the place where I'm at. So that's an average of eight closings per month per LO the entire year. That is a very high execution, right? This isn't like, you know, I have two, three people doing really well. It's like in any given month, our average loan officer is closing eight transactions, right? That's a hundred per year, just so you know, on average. So so it comes down to executing the top what we call is an operating system, and it breaks down to top eight scale sets consistently every single time.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Outstanding. That's incredible. Incredible numbers and 82% purchase. The market 57% purchase so far, first half of the year. So uh clearly outperforming on units per LO by many multiples, but uh also just on the purchase metrics. Well, last question I have, and then I'll pass it over back over to Heidi is you know, standards of service. Like, you know, a lot of lenders are, you know, I'll hear them say, like, you know, everybody is selling service right now because it's slow, right? I mean, that would be a defensible argument to, you know, so but what is, and that is true, I think, you know, to some degree, but what you're saying is we're showing people that we're doing it. We're communicating that them that to them in the right way, and we're exhibiting a higher level of service. And our partners know about that before the first referral they even make to us, it sounds like.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

It's I'm glad you mentioned that. Uh, you're absolutely right. People think of service and standards of service very differently. And it's important you brought that up. I think of standards of service as an operating system, right? And so, what does an operating system mean? So for me, it means there's there's eight things inside of the operating systems. I call that the top eight skill sets that loan officers have to be extremely good at if they want to become the best version of themselves. They want to become the most successful they can be for their families, for their clients, for their partners. Right. In the top eight skill sets, I'll just give you some examples, right? It comes down to the to the highest leverage execution in key aspects of the customer journey. Now, let me break down what the top eight skill sets are. Number one, intake mastery. Number two, consultation mastery. Number three, contract transition control. Number four, how you convert and generate and grow your referral or your active referral partner count. Number five, or like I don't even know which number I'm at right now. The next one would be how you retain your referral partner through high-level execution. There's a lot of details into that one, right? Next, I think I were number seven at this point. Uh a scripted process. So exactly what to say, the language that you speak, and exactly how to have objection control with the exact and the correct rebuttals, right? So that in pressure moments you default to a standard, not to your lowest level of competency, which is what most people actually default to. Uh, and then and then last but not least is overall structure within your organizational, uh within your organization, right? So how you structure your week and your time to maximize your results and prioritize the high-leverage uh activities that will lead to better results. Now, obviously, there's a lot there, which is, as you can see, not something that is necessarily easy to install, so requires a lot of reinforcement, right? And people need to actually practice uh over time. And practice to me, you know, I'll say one last thing here. Um people expect to, you know, a lot of times in the mortgage industry, right? Obviously, there's a lot of opportunity, and people can earn an incredible living uh and they can be very fortunate to be in this in this industry, right? And but sometimes people expect this, you know, professional athlete level compensation or income without doing what professional level athletes do in between games. What does what does a professional athlete do? They practice like crazy, right? And so a professional salesperson is just like a professional athlete. The only difference is that those that are the best, they're actually also doing what professional athletes do. They're constantly studying the overall method, they're constantly practicing the execution so that high-stake conversations aren't practice, they're actually game day execution, right? And for most people in an industry, game day is practice, right? So if you think about a loan officer, their level of compensation is directly tied to how they perform on live conversations.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yet those live conversations aren't practiced.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

It's true. It makes a lot of sense. I'm ready to come originate for you.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

I would love to have you. Please come.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

That actually goes with my follow-up question, which was going to be how do you go about recruiting people? Um, what does NFM specifically look for? And who do you think is moving and why at this point right now?

SPEAKER_00 16:19

So, you know, that that's a big question. Um, and when it comes to recruiting, uh, I'll share like what our fellow my philosophy is. Um, so I like, you know, what we've really, how we've grown to become what we are today was something that did not happen overnight, right? We didn't rely on on recruiting a ton of people to build the market share that we have built, right? This is something that has been working for 13 years. And it has really, we we have achieved the success that we have achieved in the past three years is when we've actually achieved the highest market share, right? So it was 10 years in the making and a lot of work. And the reason I mentioned that is because where we have truly, you know, had a lot of success with is to is developing originators, right? And I think that based upon what we've discussed so far, you can see what a development engine may look like, right? Operating standards, understanding of customer journey, high leverage points, just really becoming better executioner for your referral partner and better executioner for your clients and actually helping clients get into homes. Like that's the bottom line. So now let's talk about recruiting. That doesn't mean that we don't recruit, we do recruit, right? And so uh when it comes to recruiting, I think that you know people move if they find that there's a platform that can help them better serve their clients and partners, and that can perhaps help them get to a vision quicker than maybe they would be if they stayed where they are. Right. I think that's the right reason, in my opinion, to make a move. Right. I think if you're making a move for any other reason, maybe there are other reasons, right? That perhaps you're forced to move for whatever reason. Um, but I think that that's the right reason, right? Maybe you can identify a platform where you can better serve your clients and partners, but most importantly, help you get to a long-term vision in a faster timeline than otherwise you would be.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

You know, definitely part of wanting to level up and learn from the new company that you're going to as well. I think that's a big piece of it.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Yes. So, you know, so then and then my approach on this is number one, let's focus on building the people that we have, right? So we are now reliant on making desperate decision decisions on recruiting just because of volume, right? Because we and then and then and then and that allows us to then focus on alignment, right? We want people that are the right fit um for our platform and also for our culture, right? You know, just because you have great production doesn't mean that you'd be a great fit for our platform or that we would enjoy working with you, right? And so it's a good place to be when you don't rely on just having to recruit people because of production, because then you become sort of like hostage of like, you know, high-producing people. Um, and we and when when you when you can develop people from nothing to become the best in the industry, that gives you a high leverage uh place to be where you can make good recruiting decisions that are solely based on true alignment, you know, rather than just production.

unknown 19:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

And then Daniel, you know, just staying in the people front, uh, it sounds like maybe not a problem at NFM with eight plus closings per LO per month, but morale in the industry right now, like we're five, almost five and a half years into like a bear market in housing. And you guys have been able to really navigate through that. And uh, you know, to your earlier point, it's one you know, it's one of the good things about the great companies always pick up market share and down markets for the reasons that you mentioned, right? There's uh customers are more picky, they're demanding a high-end referral partners, a higher level of service, higher standards. Um, but just keeping energy up, morale up through tough months, even you know, like a lot of my clients, like August, not a great month, like for a lot of like really good companies that I work with, you know. So it's been having it's a conversation I've been having. What would your advice be? Just keeping energy morale up through you know, tough periods in a cyclical industry.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Great question. Well, there's a lot to that, okay. Uh, but it really I my belief is that really starts with the mindset. Uh is the mindset that people have is that sometimes, like, you know, they feel like you know, better market is around the corner, right? And so they just they don't develop the strategy to operate in the current market because they're waiting for things to get better. You know, that's not a strategy that works. Instead, the mindset that that I have, and this is why, listen, you know, like we have really launched and then become, you know, this incredible institution in in Ohio, right? Uh, because of a down market, right? Because our execution is more relevant right now. Like if things are really good, like sure, like our realtors and and and referral partners and clients will still enjoy working with us, but other people will also get market share because it's easy, right? So I look at obstacles and I look at adversity as an extremely important opportunity for market share growth. Because when things are harder, the little details and having a true operating system that addresses the high leverage points that matter really stand out. Right. And so just because the industry shrinks in volume, right? And or like the pie gets smaller, doesn't mean that you have to get is that doesn't mean that that your piece of the pie has to be smaller either. Right. Right? Like the pie can can reduce in size and you can choose to increase your bite of it. Right? That is a hundred percent within your control based upon specific strategy on what you have to do to gain that market share, right? And different markets require different strategy. But and so and so I think having that mindset that, hey, you know, obstacles are opportunities, tough markets are opportunities for market share. Uh, this is where we focus our energy. And then and then I thought to answer the energy question, right? Because people can develop fatigue if the results aren't there, right? And so it's all about progress, right? So you look at it where we are with the market now, rates are high, and we're averaging eight closings per LO. What do you think the energy is like? Right? It's hey, we're killing it, we're closing a lot of loans, we're helping a lot of customers, our referral partners and like our execution, they're sending us more leads, right? And so so the key as far as energy is concerned is to create progress, and you create progress by training the crap out of our team. Just so you just to give you context on this, Rich. And this is crazy, but we're training our team, and when I say training, it's extremely high-level, effective coaching, eight hours per month, two hours per week. One of the hours is like like mandatory, right? Highly encouraged, you know, meaning like always join us, right? That's uh that's our what we call our what it takes to win, and it's a highly collaborative approach, you know, on what it takes to win right now. What are the specific nuances right now that are converting contracts for agents? Little details that that can really help our referral partners. And then the other hour is on the reinforcement of the operating system, right? And so it's it's like high-leverage workshops, highly, you know, uh, it's installing the behavior, and then we've created uh a proprietary uh practice field. It's an AI practice partner, right? Where we discuss the failure point that's happening, right? We then uh and provide the exact behavior, what good looks like, and then we load that into an AI practice partner that the loan officer could be driving their car, right, or at breakfast or in their office or in between appointments, and they can run those wraps, right? It's like actual, it's like you know, like think about this role playing is the probably the highest, most important thing a loan officer should do and they know they should do, and it's the one thing that nobody does. None of them, none of them, yeah, nobody does it because it's painful to do. You need to have a partner, you need the act, you need that awkward situation of like role playing with each other. And so we've solved for that problem and we've created a practice field, right, so that you can practice between games and you can stall the behavior without you know having that awkwardness, and you can do so at the convenience of your time. You don't have to schedule, like, hey, let's role play at 9 15 a.m. every Monday.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

It's like at two o'clock in the morning, voice, like AI voice scripting agents that your people can like practice it, practice.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

It's it's a system that that we've built specifically right now to support the Great Lakes division of NFM. So it's only available in the Great Lakes division. It's uh it's a website called joinascend.ai. Uh, and we've built the models and the operating system. And uh in and our loan officers every week we provide the failure point, the exact behavior, what look, what good looks like, and then we assign the model, and then they can laugh and they can go in. We usually ask five, ten wraps, right? That's enough. Uh, and it only takes like five minutes. Yeah. Um, and so and that's been very helpful as well. But but it but when you create these kinds of um um opportunities for loan officers to succeed, the result is that they actually do succeed, right? Because these are proven um um you know, proven methods to work, and and then the progress ultimately creates the energy.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

I'm curious if the AI gives them feedback on their yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

So that's I'm I'm yes. So Rich, I would love to show you this. You're you're going to love it and hide it. It's it's it is so cool. So what it does is so again, we load up, we load up the actual behavior that we know work based on field level proven execution, not some like generic AI, you know, recommendation, right? These are field level execution that is proven by people that are closing 30, 40, 50 transactions a month. So we pick that behavior, install it uh into the model, right? And then and then you role-play it exactly. We actually give you so when when you start the practice, the script actually loads on it for you to actually follow along. And and then you provide the you, you know, you just read and pause when you're supposed to, and then the AI practice partner will engage in a conversation, right? And then you will continue reading and it'll engage or continue reading, and then in the end, when it stops, then the practice partner will grade you and it'll grade you on your content, it'll grade you on your overall uh delivery, it will grade you on the overall buyer or referral partner impact, and it'll give you an overall score. And so when we're assigning a practice partner, uh we are saying, hey, we need you to we need you to get a 90 or above across all uh uh grading systems, right? So so initially you're gonna get 100% on the content because you're reading, right? Um, but but then you're practicing your delivery and your tonality and inflection and pause, right? Once you get that good, at that piece good, then you remove the then you stop reading and you see if you still score high on the content. Once you accomplish that, then you've installed the behavior, and so it's it's really, really cool.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

It's awesome. Some really cool inside baseball from uh this week's guest on Lending Leaders Voices of the Industry, Daniel Sa, NFM Lending. Uh Columbus's number one lender, like one of the quickest growing metros in the country. And uh Daniel and his team, NFM, doing an incredible job down there. And you heard some of the reasons why. Daniel, I want to thank you so much, man, for taking some time out to share uh some of that gold with the LMBA community. Thank you. Absolutely, my pleasure. Thanks, Rich. Thanks, Heidi. Yep, and uh to my co-host Heidi, uh, and to all of you for joining us on the live. Thank you for spending a part of your Thursday afternoon with us. And uh again, we're doing so much cool, fun stuff at the LMBA. Get toohiomba.org and uh check out our event calendar. And of course, we got some great events coming up: golf outing in September, Columbus Clippers, baseball game, night at the ballpark, also in mid-September. And then, of course, home for the holidays, uh, a really intense uh Christmas-themed mortgage conference that we're going to be holding in Columbus in early December. And Daniel will be one of uh many industry leaders on the stage for that event. So thanks again to Heidi. Thanks again to all of you, and Daniel, thanks again for joining us this week, uh this month on Lending Leaders at the OMBA Podcast Network.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Thank you. Take care, everyone.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

Bye, guys.