Kind Lending, a multichannel lender based in Santa Ana, California, announced in mid-March that former employees impacted by personnel reductions in 2022 will be rehired.
So far, 15 former employees have returned to Kind, and more “rehires are in process,” according to Krish Dhokia, senior vice president of marketing and business development at the company. The executive predicts that by the beginning of April, close to two dozen former employees will have rejoined the origination shop.
“It’s a continued effort to try to bring back as many folks as we had to let go,” Dhokia added. “The ideal situation is that they found employment, but some of them might not have.”
Just like most players in the mortgage industry, Kind moved to reduce its workforce of about 300 employees in 2022, cutting headcount by close to 10%. The cuts at the lender, spurred by market volatility and low origination volume, were across the board.
Rehiring former employees comes at a time when the company is pushing to expand its presence in the retail and wholesale space.
“We are a multichannel lender, so we have a broker side of our company and we’ve just seen exponential growth there as brokers are learning and finding out about Kind,” said Dhokia. “We’ve invested a lot as far as technology and growing our account executives, also we’ve quadrupled our retail sales team in just six months, so with more sales folks there’s more business being pulled in.”
The holistic goal of Kind is to bring back all employees impacted by workforce reductions, if said employees are interested.
“Our CEO [Glenn Stearns] and the executive team told everyone that was impacted by layoffs that we will make a serious effort to bring people back when we can,” added Dhokia.
Apart from growing its wholesale and retail operations, Kind Lending is also expanding into the joint venture space. In mid-March the company entered into a joint venture with RE/MAX Results in a bid to capture more purchase business in the Midwest.
The joint venture, which is dubbed Results Home Mortgage, LLC, is headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and will focus on servicing borrowers in Minnesota and Wisconsin. This is Kind Lending’s second partnership with a real estate company.
Kind ranked as one of the best companies to work for in 2023, per a National Mortgage News survey.
Source: nationalmortgagenews.com