Shant Banosian, ranked the No. 1 loan originator in the country by volume for at least five years, is assuming the role of president at Rate Mortgage, the company announced Tuesday. Victor Ciardelli will remain the CEO of Rate Companies.
Rate, formerly known as Guaranteed Rate before a rebrand in 2024, ranked as No. 8 on the Inside Mortgage Finance ranking of top originators at just under $40 billion. Banosian has served as executive vice president of sales at Rate for more than a decade, leading his Boston-based team to originate more than $2 billion in 2021. Throughout his 20-year career he has closed more than 40,000 units and $9 billion in funded loans.
In his new role, Banosian said he will be leveraging his success as a top producing loan originator to help other Rate LOs grow their business and take market share. He sat down for an exclusive interview with Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler to talk about his goals and outlook as he takes the new role.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sarah Wheeler: How will you translate your success as an individual LO and with your team to the whole company?
Shant Banosian: My job as President is really going to be focused on doing everything I can to make us the No. 1 mortgage company in America. I’m going to start by making Rate the absolutely best place for every single loan officer to work at — figuring out ways in which we can develop them, give them all the skills, the coaching, the mentoring and the tools, so they can have an amazing business, but also better serve all their clients and all their partners.
it’s going to be impossible for me to tackle every single issue there is, but we have an amazing platform already, fortunately. I get to work, in my opinion, at the company that’s got the best platform out there, that I’ve been fortunate to be along for the ride since going back to 2012, so I feel like I’m getting the keys to like a high performance vehicle already. But my biggest focus initially is going to be the loan officers. And nobody understands the modern day law officer better than I do, because I’m one of them.
SW: What’s the biggest challenge for loan officers right now?
SB: Some of the challenges are affordability, lack of housing inventory and slow sales. So what that means to me is that we have to give loan officers a platform to be able to better educate their clients, to combat the combination of rates going up and home prices going up — you have to empower them to get them prepared for the market.
It’s also really hard to get an offer accepted in most markets. There are multiple offers in a lot of the markets, with competitive bidding wars and people willing to close quick and waive contingency. So you have to give your clients everything you have and we focus here on is certainty and speed, utilizing our tools like Same-Day Mortgage and all the different technologies that go into our platform.
The tools that we utilize allow us to truly be available to our clients when they need it the most, when it matters the most — whether it’s nights or weekends. The platform allows our loan officers to be mobile and better serve our clients. It allows us to better serve our partners, including real estate agents. We know every deal matters so we have to be a part of their team to help them do more business.
There’s also a different challenge out there. We’ve been in a housing recession for quite some time, but at some point that recession is going to end. Home sales are going to increase, inventory is going to increase, and all of a sudden you’re going to have rates come down — and all those things could theoretically happen all at the same time. So what better time than now to get everything perfect and really hone in on every facet of our business to make sure that when that time does hit, that everybody’s ready, prepared and able to take advantage of the market opportunities in front of us. That’s another big challenge that nobody’s talking about yet, but I’m thinking about it.
SW: You’ve talked here and in earlier interviews about the role of technology in your success. What differentiates Rate’s tech?
SB: Our technology is amazing. You can get a full loan approval in a matter of hours now, like a real loan approval. One of the things I learned early on in my career is how important access and availability to your clients and to your Realtors are, and that’s what our technology allows us to do. And it allows us to not just be accessible and available, but to be able to provide real time, accurate information that people can make life-changing decisions with.
We’re constantly reinvesting in the tech here at Rate and it’s made a massive difference. I’ve been able to scale my business here from when I first got here in 2012 doing $47 million to having over a billion dollars in a year. And when you’re closing over $2 billion, without having worked any more hours, without burning out — I’ve actually been able to work less, and I’ve been able to grow my family. That’s another part that’s really important to me. I want people to be able to scale their business, have more success, make more of an impact in their communities, while also having a great quality of life.
The whole point of having success in life is to be able to have great success at work and have that spill over into your personal life and vice versa. So we want to create an environment where you can have the best of both, and the tech does that too. It gives you freedom, it gives you fulfillment. I think that’s really important.
SW: That balance of work and personal life seems like a very different vision than some lender leaders have. What else do you think distinguishes your success?
SB: I am generally an optimistic and positive person and I think that’s one reason why I’m successful. I look for the opportunity in every market. The loan officer count has shrunk a lot in the last few years — that’s really dire. However, for the people in it, that means there’s way more opportunity. I did a billion dollars in 2024 when there were less home sales than there’s been in decades — in the face of rates in the 7s and 8s. One of the reasons is because there’s less competition.
People are distracted listening to the noise, where I just focus on the opportunity at hand, and the market share that I could go out and gain right now. We did more than we did in years. like 2020, 2016, 2017, 2018 — where there were more home sales and lower rates. So I tend to be very optimistic. I think that’s the right way to approach life — it attracts the right kind of partners, the right kind of clients. And hopefully, in this case, it helps me attract owner originators that are looking to grow their businesses. For some, they’ll look at some of the numbers and think that it’s impossible. I just don’t think it’s impossible. One of my goals is to have more people come into this business, and more people to take advantage of this amazing opportunity that we have working in the housing market.
SW: How will you judge your success in this role?
SB: it’s going to be about how happy the loan originators are. if they’re coming to work every single day and feel like they’re supported — empowered with the right training, the coaching, the mentoring, the skills development — and they’re able to turn all those feelings into success, ultimately that’s how I’ll judge it.
I want to help develop and retain the highest number of top producers. Of course, I want to make Rate the No. 1 mortgage company in the country. But if I do all those other things first, all that other stuff will come. One of the biggest reasons I’m taking this new role, is that this business has been super, super, super amazing to me. It’s been life changing for me in terms of some of the things that I’ve been able to accomplish, so if I can just do a little bit in terms of just sharing all the success that I’ve had and pass that on to everybody, that would be success. I want to share all the things that this business has meant to me — all the things I’ve learned, all the experiences, all the mistakes I’ve made, all the success that I’ve had with the team here at Rate, and hopefully that is able to raise the expectations, the standards, the opportunities available for all of us. So that’s that’s my measure of success.
I know how to do the mortgage business. One of the ways business has changed is not just technology, it’s that your impact is ultimately determined by your audience. And I’m going to do everything I can to teach the team and to help support the team to go and increase their audience and influence as much as possible. Whether that be social media, in person, events, database, communication; whether it’s by email, text, phone, call, in person, like we’re going to do everything we can to increase our audience here and just be market leaders in terms of the way we market and brand ourselves. That’s had a huge impact for me in terms of being able to create this brand for myself. My goal is to help the LOs here do the same thing.
SW: Victor Ciardelli will still be CEO — how will you work with him?
SB: Victor’s not going anywhere! Victor is CEO and president of Rate Companies, which has 15 companies. I’m going to be the president of Rate Mortgage. Victor is still our visionary, he’s our leader. I’m going to be working directly with Victor on everything, but he’s as focused, motivated and determined as I’ve ever seen him, and I’m looking forward to working with him every single day.
