Should loan officers be exempt or not
System
5,885 Posts
We currently have loan officers classified as exempt employees. We are struggling with this. Some in management say they should be exempt because they make decision on giving a loan to a customer. Other in management say that they are only following what our loan policy states and that they very rarely make any decisions outside of the loan policy. So should they be non-exempt because they are basically making their decisions on policy or guidelines already established for them. None of these officers have any supervisory responsibilities.
Comments
It tends to fall in the category of workers like artist who use old computer designs to create new designs. Unless the artist is literally creating a new pattern from scratch and their dreams. "By the copying of old combinations of patterns our exempt professional artist were found to be misidentified as EXEMPT and it led a wage and hour auditor to the decision that these workers were no longer professional artist and the work they did, did not require a college degree in marketing or computer science, nor did they have decision making to complete a pattern for a purchase order. Needless to say we were surprised, but that was the end result and I learned a lot about the definitions and job descriptions for exempt and non-exempt jobs. I am a firm believer in paying by the hour verses salary. I wish I too could be non-exempt. Good Luck Pork
In a former life, I was in banking and all loan officers were non-exempt, basically for the reasons mentioned. They merely followed banking protocol in making loans. Now... lending supervisors/managers who have to use their discretion and independent judgment on whether certain loans are granted or who may be in a position to help shape policy, they would be classified as exempt.