There is rarely a mortgage conference in the country with an all-women line-up, and even rarer that all or a majority of that line-up consists of women of color – until now.
Corvallis residents and entrepreneurs Liz Irish and Melissa Bird have created “The Women Producers in Mortgage Conference (WPIM),” an online event being held from 8 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 10, to 4 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 11. Disrupting the traditional speaker line-ups, this event features 11 women presenters, authors, coaches, realtors and influencers in the financial fields – many of whom are women of color.
“While WPIM is national, I encourage Corvallis women who work in all the aspects connected to mortgages – realtors, insurance agents, or investors – to come to network,” said Irish. “We also think men who want to hire super-producers should attend to discover a unique resource.”
How WPIM Started
Back in December of 2019, Irish and Bird met over coffee when Irish mentioned that women mortgage producers sell differently from men, and that she wanted to do more to help these women connect, grow personally, and earn more.
They started a YouTube channel interviewing C-suite-level women in different industries who started their own conferences that were tied to larger corporations. From these interviews, Irish and Bird realized there were common themes arising, mainly that women don’t move up into the higher ranks and that men received better “basis points” – the mortgage industry standard for commission pay.
Pay disparity between men and women is well documented. Irish learned first-hand how big the gap is in her industry when she was helping her boss recruit two high achievers – one man, one woman.
“The gentleman, who brought in $15 million in monthly closings, was receiving at his then current company a compensation package that included 165 basis points… a fully funded support staff, and a 55% override of all the loan managers and staff under him,” said Irish. “Meanwhile, the woman, who brought in $35 million in monthly closings, received 104 basis points, had to pay half of her staff’s salary – which brought her pay down to 50 basis points, and received a 10% override. When I pointed this disparity out to the gentleman’s boss, his response was a sidestep – telling me ‘but look at all the women and minority managers I’ve hired!’”
This experience motivated Irish to take action.
In her research, she discovered that while the lowest rungs of the industry – loan officers and managers – consist mostly of women and other minoritized groups, at C-suite levels, the ratios lean heavily toward men. Her research also showed that efforts to raise minoritized groups to the upper ranks are often performative at best.
According to research done by management consulting firm McKinsey, Closing the Gap: Leadership Perspectives on Promoting Women in Financial Services, “In North America, women account for over half of the entry-level workforce in financial services. They have reached the highest levels within companies, and their numbers at the top continue to grow, albeit slowly. Despite this progress, women still represent fewer than one in five positions in the financial-services C-suite. There is much work to be done to achieve gender parity in the financial-services sector.”
Putting Research Into Action
Based on industry statistics and their interviews with C-suite women in mortgage, Irish and Bird have created a conference to address what’s missing. With a mission to empower women to succeed through their innate strengths, WPIM offers topics such as awareness of how women in mortgage sell differently, how to negotiate salaries, overcome self-doubt, and leadership skills.
Among the many high-powered speakers, the first session opens with Laura J. Brandao, the President and only woman partner at American Financial Resources. Another keynote speaker is award-winning writer and activist Soraya Chemaly, who will discuss the role of gender as well as how to use anger positively to become a better leader.
You can register now for the Women Producers in Mortgage Conference here on the Hopin virtual meeting platform.
By Stacey Newman Weldon
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