loan officer

mortgage loan originator

account executive

senior software engineer

senior loan officer

Cardinal Financial Company

I often learned about things from other coworkers who were a week or two ahead of me in training before I would be informed by supervisors on what was happening. I learned more from other trainees ahead of me than from anything else. At times, it was the only way I was made aware of what was going on and I was given more information and beneficial resources from them than the people who were being paid to provide that and guide me through training. It was a constant ongoing joke in the group chats throughout the company that that was truly the onyl way any of us were going to make it. I cant tell you how many times ni the group chat I was a part of that someone said they cried or had an absolute break down from being spoken to poorly or absolutely yelled at. I worked nonstop and felt like a majority of the time had nothing to show for it despite my obvious efforts that were displayed on daily reports. It just didn't make sense. I cant tell you how many times I emailed management or messaged them and saw they read the email or message and they just simply never responded. Often at times it could be things that held me or kept me from having as smooth of an experience as some people. They tended to forget there were alot of us hired with no experience and we were going through this training for the first time, when multiple others had been through this several times to finally pass, and some had already been licensed and working in the industry for years. It could be legitimate questions or concerns about the job or training or help with a customer and it was their role to guide me through it and it would take days if not longer to get a response, and most the time I had to resend messages to get that response. Even then, it seemed like questions weren't being answered and I was given short responses that lead to no solution in alot of cases. I think to respond to the crazy demand for refi's during this past year they did a mass hire and just kept hiring to respond to as many inquiries as possible, using their trainees to field and sort through the initial outgoing calls in which you get beat to death with people who are just tired and over being bombarded by telemarketers. They truly had some great training throughout my time there and there are some insanely great and talented people working there, however, it's like being an elementary school trying to teach kids how to write for the first time in some cases. If you have a class of 200 kids, its gonna be fairly difficult to get to the all and make sure they have the support and direction to help them succeed at writing their first words properly. It seemed like the company took on so many employees at a time that for those that actually had questions along the way in alot of cases, you weren't responded to on many occasions. Pretty disheartening when youve dedicated months of your time and a pay cut to completing training and passing the Loan officers licensing test which is difficult. I passed it on the first try with an 84 so I know its not for lack of knowledge or effort on my part. They call system had "bugs" too which somehow would flip your dialer into "nurture" mode without you knowing it meaning your specific dialer would only be calling people who had already been called more than 10 times, marked not interested, marked that they had gone with another mortgage company etc. So basically you could spend an hour or two calling customers who were a lost cause and not know it until you messaged a senior LO begging them to help you figure out why every call you had had a certain code on it and you were getting nowhere with any of them. I was finally told about the "bug" and it continued to happen even after several of us finally catching on and bringing it to their attention. This company has a really awesome atmosphere too and there were parts I really thought were enjoyable but the weight of consistently having issues like this with the dialer, basically being set up for failure, along with how terribly slow and unorganized file reviewers were with finalizing loans and getting everything done for it to be able to close, you end up being worn down and never see the potential that you were sold when you first started. The group processing the loans to get them closed would continuously email customer asking for things they already had even after me messaging them to verify and confirm. It caused delays and upset customers and in turn reflected on me being the main contact for the customer since I sold them on the loan to begin with. I wasn't told that it would be a telemarketing job either when I first interviewed. They talked alot about the money that I was surely going to make hands down but it wasn't until  my first day of training that it was explained to me and one other person in our training class that we were now telemarketers. He was just as clueless as I was to that. The calls we made were to people who had simply typed in information hoping to get an immediate quote somewhere online. Surprise. Thats not how that works and instead myself along with who knows how many other people were steady ringing that number to the point that we were calling the same people 4 times a day if not more. They had fun perks, but when it came down to it, I did not get the experience I was sold, especially when it came to getting assistance with questions or concerns despite the insistence that senior LOs were there to help with all questions and concerns as were managers. After messaging my manager and not getting a response for several days, I decided to put my two weeks in as I had just about enough of feeling like I was working for a company who didnt even realize I actually existed. After having coworkers who worked in other states message my questions to the same managers and them getting a response after I had tried several times already, I realized it just wasnt the place for me. I put my notice in and it was very formal and kind and appreciative. It took two and a half weeks, and me messaging back and forth with the super sweet girl I had met who handled all of our time clock stuff and reports etc and her messaging my manger a couple times for my manager to acknowledge he had received my notice. Over three weeks later, after I had already started my next job, I was contacted on how and what to do to return my computer equipment. This job is great if you have thick skin, enjoy rebutting people, enjoy long hours, not making $$$ to compensate when the industry takes a turn or your dialer somehow mysteriously and continuously gets set in a mode that gives you "no go" customers, and you're either slightly experienced or completely catch on from the get go and just fake it till you make it, and are cool with dealing with power tripping team leads who aren't the nicest.

Leadership is enamored with the idea of being tech-driven, but decision-making remains rigid, top-down, and allergic to modern product development principles. Those who push for change quickly learn that questioning the status quo isn’t just frowned upon—it’s a career-limiting move. The result? A culture that values compliance over creativity and stagnation over strategy.

Product teams are meant to solve real problems through experimentation, iteration, and user research. At Cardinal, they’re stuck in a cycle of reactive development, prioritizing feature quantity over quality. Worse still, the company has developed a troubling habit of hiring product and design talent, failing to give them true ownership, and then cycling them out just as quickly. This revolving door doesn’t just demoralize employees; it actively erodes institutional knowledge, making long-term progress impossible.

The company’s early success gave it a strong foundation, but rather than building upon it with intelligent iteration, it clings to outdated strategies while throwing around buzzwords. If the CEO is serious about transformation, the smartest move would be stepping back from daily product decisions and letting capable leaders drive strategy. That’s not abdication—that’s leadership. 

If Cardinal genuinely wants to be a product-led company, it needs to take decisive action—starting with hiring experienced product leaders who know how to execute, iterate, and scale. More importantly, leadership must learn to trust them. True innovation doesn’t come from micromanagement; it comes from empowering teams, fostering a culture of experimentation, and making data-driven decisions.

Cardinal Financial is an nationwide internet mortgage bank. In the retail direct loan officer position the loan officer works in a call center environment making mostly outbound calls trying to build realtor partnerships with agents that are mostly in other states. Partnerships procured by offering marketing dollars to Realtor to help pay for their Zillow Premier account monthly membership fees. Very difficult to build rapport and manage book-of-business when sitting in a call center 40+ hours a week. Business model would best work by working from a retail street sales perspective where loan officers can work face-to-face with business partners. 

When realtor partnerships are establish expectation is for realtor to send business to loan officer which can occur anytime including nights and weekends. When realtor sends business the loan officers locks rate and submits file to processing. Processing team is somewhat disconnected from loan officer/sales side. Management boasts about processing assembly line strategy for maintaining short processing times, however processing still botches up most of the purchase deals and has a hard closing the loans on time. This makes the loan officer's job very difficult in trying to maintain the realtor partnership.

Management does not seem to understand the importance of getting out of the office and trying to work with realtor and business partners face-to-face.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Working remotely

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
I was hired as a Transaction Coordinator, my title changed, along with others and we where still expected to do the TC's job plus our new roll that now included answering phones. It turned into a call center customer service position even though they refused to call it that. They are constantly restructuring, promise promotions in order to get you to do extra work and then a year goes by and you never get it but you are still expected to do the work for the "promotion" they told you about. Now they are no longer doing refinances and restructuring the roll again. You never know what job you will be doing next week. They over-hire when they panic and then do massive layoffs when their panicking if over. They took away our bonuses with nearly no notification and they did that by changing all of our titles and combining the position with a customer service call center type of roll. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Stressful, always worried out the next round of layoffs. They make up rules on the go to come up with reasons to write people off so that they can fire you instead of laying you off. I was one of those and I fought my wright-up. I know of a few others that did the same. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
You have your own accounts to work, you answer phones, transfer calls and note the account.

I was a Sr Processor for 4 years. They were loyal to me as I was to them. The tools for efficiency were lower while numbers were expected to climb and the stress just became too much. I had been a mortgage processor for 17 years and had always excelled at my job. I was terminated in the middle of the day last week with no explanation, while I was working after I had turned in FMLA paperwork and was let go 8 days later. The higher ups are nice people - they had been through a lot with me in the past 4 years but those issues have died down. I really enjoyed being a server - being up and around and not sitting behind a computer for sometimes 50 hours a week. I need to be with my family  and I just can't put in that many hours right now. The borrowers for the most part liked me (we were/are and online company) so that could cause some frustration when the file got to me. My co-workers and I got along fine - I chose not to hang out after work. I did enjoy processing because it's like a giant puzzle that you had to put together and close that loan which was satisfying but the more advanced the company became the more puzzle pieces were missing, hence, making it difficult to keep up the numbers and the threat of losing your job was on the line daily. It was too much for me as a single Mom.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Nice people (at least non managers are helpful) and remote work.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The IT platform is for the most part efficient, but efficiency is often limited due to systems being designed for production staff mostly, not downstream staff and it has a very impersonal clunkiness.  I would say that management has lost the trust of workers and that is not going to come back when the market improves.  Layoffs don't seem to be based on any objective metric criteria and heartless reductions in staff will result in talented staff not signing on in the future.  New management appears almost out of nowhere and don't seem invested in knowing their staff, beyond daily metrics.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Not motivating for sure.  There is too much 'of a need to know' information sharing and employee skill sets atrophy in this environment. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Co-workers are great.  There is a 'high touch' emphasis that cultivates easy dialogue.

Typical day of work consisted of cold calling brokers to arrange new business agreements for mortgage lending using Octane (proprietary software). 

Octane is a great software and is able to be used effectively with the right client. If the client isn't technologically inclined, there will be no sense in talking to them about Octane. It has a huge learning curve, but if learned correctly, can positively change the way a broker operates. 

Hardest part of the job was trying to get brokers to do THEIR job. An Account Executive is only successful if the broker cooperates with them. 

Direct manager was great, my performance was great, no issues. Then a sudden zoom call, out of the blue, I was laid off and given severance "company downsizing". They downsized across multiple departments and fired the most productive workers; kept all of the unproductive ones. This lay off was company wide. California, Arizona, NY, Charlotte. Everywhere. Was told it wasn't the first lay off and not the last. "No one is protected from lay offs" 

Work from home was nice, but they were making talks of going back to the office summer 2022. 


I was "hired" on as a Loan Originator Assistant, and they told me the start date would be in 2-3 weeks. Then they called me and asked me start the next day and I would be given a signing bonus to make up for the time I spent before HR could confirm my background check, etc. Fast forward to multiple weeks of cold-calling down a list (which was not what the role was described as) they sent the offer letter that listed my "signing bonus" as a "advance draw," in other words, I was not getting paid for nearly a month of work if my tenure of employment was less than a year with them. If I had to quit or they fired me (in an at-will state) before a year, I would owe THEM $1200 back in the wages I rightfully earned by working for them full time. I discussed my concerns with management and they told me this was basically an insurance policy, and they intentionally listed it so that it wouldn't be "given" to me even though I earned it- the money in the advance draw was actually only about 3/4 of what I actually earned hourly and I didn't even get to keep it. Complete abuse and manipulation of their employees, very deceitful. 

Cardinal is very aware of the importance of work / life balance. I've never worked for such a great company that allows you to maintain such a great work / life balance. Having this balance allows for a peaceful and stress free work day! 

Cardinal has great management that supports your growth and empowers you to do as much as you are able to. The leadership cares and checks often making sure you are not overwhelmed or stressed. They support a reasonable and manageable workload. Although many positions are remote, the leaders are constantly looking for ways to bring the team(s) together and to help get to know each other. 

Cardinal as a whole is always improving and growing their processes, offering excellent products and they do an great job of providing proactive communication at all times. I am proud to work for a company that has cutting edge technology and resources available for our customers and employees. 

Love it here !!!

When I found Cardinal Financial Company, I found a great relationship and partnership. In 2019 when I began to work there I knew that this was a great company to grow with. My belief in a long term relationship with Cardinal Financial Company was always reassuring. Training was great, management was great and promotions was great until December 2021 when I was called by my manager who was on vacation as was told in 2 mins that at that very moment I was being laid off.  All I could do is cry I was devastated. But after praying I reached out to a previous manager from a different department to see if I could come back and thankfully there was a opening as she was able to pull me back in. I was only off for 1 day. I was told that no layoffs was happening in this department. On March 14th another Wow… I received a call at the end of my shift by upper management that I was being laid off again…. So shocked that I could not cry. It’s been hard since then. But I will remain hopeful that I will find another job soon. I really hope Cardinal Financial Company get it together it’s really a good company. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Loan officer 1 salary reported	$137,500 per year
Mortgage loan originator 2 salaries reported	$65,600 per year
Account executive 13 salaries reported	$36,308 per year
Senior software engineer 5 salaries reported	$133,800 per year
Senior loan officer 3 salaries reported	$250,000 per year

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