Between all the paperwork, reviewing, calculations, and calls, there’s one thing many mortgage loan officers have in common – the lack of time management skills.

Any job in finance is stressful and time-consuming, but being a mortgage loan officer is one for the books. You need to constantly keep up with rates, laws, and regulations in order to be prepared for your clients day-in and day-out. Aside from constantly being in the loop, you’re in charge of reviewing each and every document your client provides, and making the crucial verdict of what they do and do not qualify for – plus you’re their main point of contact with prospective financial institutions.

If you’re overworking yourself 24/7, then you not only risk burning out and starting to resent your job, but being in such a delicate field where a small oversight or miscalculation can have serious consequences – you may even jeopardize your career.

Here are our top 5 time management tips for loan officers.

Don’t say yes to everything

Picture representing the importance of time management: A piece of paper on a marbletop table saying "Balance" and "Burnout" with a tick box next to each. A hand with a pen is hovering over the tickbox next to "Burnout". On the right side of the image, there are pencil shreds all over the table.

Your job relies on selling, but overselling won’t make your business flourish – it could actually drown it.  We all know how competitive the mortgage industry is and that it’s not easy to decline a client, no matter how much paperwork needs to be checked or how (un)realistic it is to meet your client’s needs and deadlines.

Yet, what you’re risking is devoting a lot of time and energy into a fruitless loop, which would be better spent nurturing your current clients and having an open eye for new loan prospects.

Declining to take on a new or rather difficult client until your schedule is open is not something to be frowned upon. Having work-life balance also means having more energy to do your job better later on, so say “no” when you see yourself stepping over these boundaries.

Divide your workday

Your schedule should be adjusted to your own work style and capacities. Do you find overviewing credit scores more daunting than going through your leads in your email? Are you more productive in the morning? Then the first thing you should do when you come to work is review documents before hopping onto email when you’re done.

Work schedules needn’t be fixed in stone, but having a routine and checking it off will help you not jump back and forth between tasks  – trying to remember where you left off the last time.

Make a priority list

A loan closing in a few days is much more important to revisit than preparing for an interview scheduled next month.

Procrastination is something that everyone does, even loan officers. Sometimes, though, we just forget how much work we have to do or what should come first. This is why it’s important to plan out and prioritize your tasks ahead of time. It’s also important to do so in a way you don’t look past your priority list, either.

Nudge yourself in whatever way works best for you. If a literal checklist is not your thing, then you can scribble a note a few days ahead in your calendar, set up a reminder on your phone, utilize task managers, or even clutter your computer screen with color-coded sticky notes.

Two yellow post-it notes stuck to the upper right corner of a laptop screen. One of them has "do it" scribbled with a marker, while the second one more towards the middle of the screen says "now" in bigger lettering.

Streamline internal marketing

If you’re a one-man-show, then putting together loan applications and writing blog posts simultaneously is a recipe for disaster. As with everything else in the mortgage business, planning is key for mortgage marketing.

Consider using content calendars. Each time you get an idea for a new post for your blog or socials, paste it into your calendar. If you get the creative energy to write three pieces at once, then distribute them evenly and utilize scheduling platforms to automatically publish them at a later date.

If you’re running a business and find that your team is reaching your capacities, then don’t be afraid to outsource, as well. Better time management on your end will help you focus on the core of your business while your marketing agency handles the content.

Mortgage software solutions

The rise of technology is every loan officer’s dream. With new CRMs, plugins, and turnkey automation solutions, there is so much you can do.

Gone are the days of filling shelves with endless binders of files. All-in-one mortgage software solutions allow you to streamline each part of your sales process through creating custom automated marketing and communication content, maintain data integrity when delegating, and share confidential files with secure end-to-end encryption.

Mortgage software solutions allow loan officers to build out task lists, set up each sale as an individual project with just a few clicks, create outreach templates and maximize digital marketing efforts, streamline customer service operations, create personalized status alerts, and so much more.

If you find that a step in your operations processes is calling for an exponential amount of human effort, spreadsheet management, and file organization, then you’re definitely a candidate for loan assistant software.

Do you have any time management tips for loan officers we didn’t list? We want to hear about it! Let us know marketing@aduvo.com.