Mortgage brokers have been under assault by the extreme transparency advocates
these last few years. Very smart people have embraced technology as the
catalyst of change. They proclaim that technology will change how the
American public compensates mortgage brokers. I think their advocacy
has some merit.
Most consumers just don’t care about extreme transparency in lending.
Oh, sure. The engineers who read Milton Friedman and St. Augustine may actually adopt a moral position about the evil greed that permeates our industry. They might vent about the immoral nature of the “secret profits” earned by originators who do business the “traditional” way. These consumers, a very minor subset of the population, are predestined to mistrust anything that smacks of traditionalism. Last decade, full-service securities brokerage firms advised people that their high commissions were actually more effective to get investors to buy and hold rather than to trade incessantly. Still, the engineers distrusted the establishment while they day-traded their retirement accounts away on high-flying internet IPOs through ScottTrade.
