Working Overtime As A Mortgage Loan Officer?
If you are employed as a mortgage loan officer and are performing “typical mortgage loan officer duties”, you may be entitled to overtime premium pay if you have worked over 40 hours in a workweek.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage & Hour Division, provided its interpretation of the administrative exemption from overtime as applied to employees who perform the typical job duties of a mortgage loan officer. Based on the following and the Administrator’s interpretation, employees who perform these duties do not qualify as bona fide administrative employees under section 13(a)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1).
Pursuant to the experience of the Wage & Hour Division, the following are the typical mortgage loan officer (or mortgage loan representative and mortgage loan consultant) job duties: receiving internal leads and contacting potential customers or receiving contacts from customers generated by direct mail or other marketing activity; collecting required financial information from customers they contact or who contact them; entering the collected financial information into a computer program that identifies which loan products may offered to the customer; assessing the loan products identified and discussing with the customers the terms and conditions of the loans and trying to match the customers’ needs with a particular loan; compiling customer documents for forwarding to an underwriter or loan processor; and finalizing documents for closing.
In order to be exempt from the overtime provisions of the FLSA, the employee must 1) be compensated on a salary basis not less than $455 per week; 2) perform duties of office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer’s customers; and 3) exercise discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance while performing their primary duties.
The Administration believes that loan officers performing these typical duties do not meet the requirements to be exempt from overtime as a bona fide administrative employee. Specifically, these employees primary duties are not the performance of office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer’s customers. This exemption is “limited to those employees whose primary duty relates ‘to the administrative as distinguished from the production operation of a business.’”
Therefore, those employed as a mortgage loan officer, and are performing routine duties as described by the Wage & Hour Division, may be entitled to overtime premium pay for any hours worked over 40 in a workweek.
See Wage & Hour Division (WHD) Administrator’s Interpretation No. 2010-1 for the full explanation for its interpretation.
Young Law Group is a nationwide leader in whistleblower representation and has successfully represented numerous clients in some of the nation’s largest qui tam cases for over a decade. For a free confidential consultation, please call Eric L. Young, Esquire at (800) 590-4116 or complete our online form.