The big interview: Anthony Casa on going ‘all-in’ with NEXA and what he’s doing next
“One thing we see in a lot of organizations is you see a great entrepreneur, and sometimes you see a lot of yes-men around them,” he said. “And when you get that, that’s where the organizations stall out. What I saw with Mike is he built a really good leadership team and he does get held accountable and he does get a lot of feedback.”
Growing the pie for LOs
For the UMortgage loan officers who will transition into NEXA’s platform, Casa said the focus will be on what happens to individual origination volume rather than overall headcount, since NEXA already has more than 4,000 loan officers and the goal is not simply to add 246 more and move on.
“What we’re really focusing on is how do we increase the funding for a loan officer,” he said. “How do we help our loan officers build their teams and take their businesses to the next level? We want to grow the pie for each individual LO.”
He said the technology and sales culture UMortgage built will come into NEXA’s organization and help level up the existing team. UMortgage landed on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the country three years running, a track record he said backs up the argument he will be making to other broker shops.
As for why he made the move, it was about staying ahead of the competition. He believed UMortgage had plateaued and could not invest at the level needed to stay competitive, while Kortas was already doing the things Casa wanted to do, including launching evoLend, a servicing platform, and acquiring longstanding websites like FSBO.com.
