“What I focused on is keeping our message consistent with our mission in ensuring the best degree of integrity amongst mortgage professionals,” he said. He described a ripple effect with the academic efforts as brokers and loan originators take the knowledge learned from NAMB offerings and put it in practice in their very own communities. “That’s how we attract most of our members because we offer something of value they will take back to their states, their customers and so forth.”
Taking on trigger leads
On the legislative side, he oversaw efforts to fight against so-called trigger leads – a widespread practice among the many three credit standing agencies. Trigger leads occur when a borrower applies for a loan – at which point a credit report is drawn, triggering an inquiry. Credit bureaus are then made aware the borrower is trying to find a loan and may sell that information to numerous lenders – often resulting in a bombardment of calls or text messages to beleaguered borrowers.
“This yr, we had our legislative conference in April in DC, and we were in a position to get the trigger leads bill, HR 2656, introduced by Congressman Ritchie Torres out of New York,” he said. Another group representing brokers, the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts, has also joined the fight against trigger leads but expressed concern over the bill Jones referenced. In a previous interview with MPA, an AIME representative said the bill seeks to ban the practice altogether even while some leads are essential to the method.
“It wasn’t an ideal bill, and I don’t understand how many bills start off as perfect,” Jones acknowledged. “We have been trying for five, seven years to get something began,” he noted. “In order to win you’ve to indicate up, and NAMB showed up and we were in a position to get that trigger leads bill began.
“The challenge the opposite organization had on the time was that the bill included all the pieces, and there are some brokers and loan originators who use leads with a view to get business. We were never advocating that it couldn’t be done; we desired to have an option that you can opt in without having to opt out.”
