When you are trying to sell a loan there are two things to always remember-

1) "All politics is local"
Tip O'Neil. Speaker of the House during the Reagan Administration
2) "Size doesn't matter " Anonymous

Should I choose a larger lender or a smaller lender?

You borrowers ask this question all the time. Well I've got news for all of you. Just like Tip O'Neil said about politics, all lending is local too. Your borrower is going to go with you regardless of for whom you work. Whether or not they go with you is strictly a matter of trust (assuming all other things are equal e.g. rates, ability to close, etc.).

Does your borrower trust you, that is the question. That goes back to basic Loan Officer 101. Do you return phone calls in a timely manner, are you willing to be upfront and honest, can you give the borrower bad news as well as good news, all very important questions for your borrowers and all affect the trust that they assign to you.

You borrower could not care less about the size of your lending institution, It is you that they will evaluate and their opinion of the lender will be tempered by their opinion of you.

If a Loan Officer works for a company like Well or BOA for example , and he/she doesn't get back to the client with timely information or doesn't return calls, the borrower is not going to care about all of the asserts that those banks control. They are only going to care about their loan and how their loan officer treated them (all politics is local).

The other side of that coin is that if the Loan Officer works for a smaller lender, and doesn't return calls or doesn't get back to the client with timely information, then the clients opinion of that lender will be..........wait a minute. The answer is the same. It seems that that coin only has one side. How about that?

So to all of you soldiers out there, if you work for a smaller bank, you can be confident that the size of your institution will not ultimately matter at all and to you soldiers that work for the larger lenders, don't be so self assured that your borrower will stick with you through thick and thin because your institution so large, it still all comes down to you (size does not matter)