NEXA Mortgage, the largest mortgage brokerage firm in the U.S., will pay its loan officers 100% of the commission splits “without any per-file fees or other hidden fees,” according to co-founder and CEO Mike Kortas.
NEXA usually pays loan officers 220 basis points (bps) out of 275 bps on most loans. However, moving forward, it will allow LOs to access the remaining funds — the 55-bps difference — through its new program, NEXA100.
Prior to NEXA100, 100% commissions were just paid in three situations: when a branch closed over $2 million in mortgage loans, an individual originated over $3 million, and a partner brought in 20 people, Kortas said in an interview.
“We truly believe that if we give LOs the income off the loans, they will grow the company,” Kortas said. “People are making accusations that there will be filing fees attached to this. There are no file fees attached to this. There are no hidden fees. You can check our rate sheets.”
Loan officers will continue to have access to the company’s revenue share program. In place for five years, it pays loan officers 10 bps every time a new loan officer they recruited originated a loan. Last month, the program paid $870,000 to LOs, he added.
“Nobody can explain how good a company is better than a loan officer at that company. So, we don’t hire recruiters; what we do is give away the profits to the loan officers so that they can recruit other loan officers directly,” Kortas said.
NEXA operates a profit-and-loss model (P&L), with its LOs managing their operations. Kortas said that the company charges a technology fee of $75 monthly per person but has other revenue sources than the commission split, such as events and its tech platform. He added that NEXA has been profitable since its inception in 2017.
“There are more ways to make money than on loan fees for a broker. I won’t give out trade secrets, but it’s a real and sustainable thing,” Kortas said. “We’re announcing the NEXA100 program because we are going to double in size from 2,500 to 5,000 loan officers by the end of 2025.”
NEXA was founded in Arizona by Kortas and Mat Grella after they left Equity Prime Mortgage. But the partners are splitting up. Since its founding, the company has processed over 85,000 home mortgages.
