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Rocket Pro is partnering with Vetted VA, which provides education to veterans and training to loan officers to give veterans better access to home loan benefits.
The partnership, announced on Tuesday at The Gathering by HousingWire, will involve the training of Rocket staff and LOs by Vetted VA so the lender can better serve the veteran community.
Katie Sweeney, Rocket Pro’s executive vice president of broker advocacy, said that she had a previous relationship with Vetted VA while working at the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME).
“They know more about VA loans than anybody else,” Sweeney told HousingWire in an interview. “We don’t want to create a roadblock internally. That was a lot for loan officers.
“They’ll submit a VA loan to a wholesale lender, they’ll get that loan in the hands of an underwriter who’s not familiar with VA loan product, and then all of a sudden, you’ve got additional complications that aren’t necessary. We don’t ever want to create more barriers.”
The point of the partnership, Sweeney said, is to take away the friction that comes with LOs who are unfamiliar with the VA loan product. She also said the partnership holds Rocket Pro accountable by equipping staff with the resources to educate others and be thought leaders about the VA loan.
“A big part of our partnership with Vetted VA will be them coming in and internally auditing us, and helping us level up the training that we’ve got,” she said, adding that Vetted VA will be doing both in-person and online training sessions.
“In removing that friction, we need to be investing in training more than anybody else, and we need to be investing in internal education more than anyone else,” Sweeney added. “We want our partners and we want the broker community to be able to hold us accountable to that training that we’re providing. We want them to be able to tell us, ‘Hey, this went wrong, this needs to be fixed,’ and we need to be able to go and resolve it.”
Sweeney said that part of her mission of coming to Rocket Pro is to encourage partnerships, like the one with Vetted VA, as a means of uplifting smaller voices in the broker space. She hinted at further partnerships down the line and expects the Vetted VA connection to last indefinitely.
“The founders of Vetted VA realized there is not only a lack of education directly to veterans, there’s a lack of education to loan officers understanding how to facilitate VA lending. And combating a lot of the misconceptions that have existed in the market is not something that’s done at scale,” she explained.
“Now, they have close to 100,000 veterans [who] engage on a monthly basis, that have direct access to free, unbiased, reliable education.”
Vetted VA’s Founder & CEO, Christopher Griffith, says the trainings are to prevent veterans from being met with false information and “lazy” answers. “The VA loan is the only mortgage earned in blood, limb and life,” the Marine veteran told HousingWire. “So when a professional says ‘You need more skin in the game,’ they’re just proving that they don’t understand what’s already been paid.”
Griffith continued, “That ends here. This industry must become better — and this partnership is how we start.”
Closing the gaps
Part of the reasoning behind the partnership, Sweeney said, is to bring greater exposure to the veterans who are incorrectly served by lenders and loan officers.
“There are five major benefits that you are eligible for when you retire from the services. The VA home loan is the only one that is not federally backed or facilitated. So there is no accountability. There’s no responsibility for the information that’s being disseminated,” she said.
Oftentimes, she said, lenders who are unfamiliar with the VA loan try to push a veteran borrower into a more familiar product, which could cost them more.
“These people worked really hard and sacrificed a lot, and their families sacrificed a lot. And the fact that they’re still being misguided or pushed into products that aren’t as strong for them long term, that don’t have the same wealth-building capabilities, that don’t have the same flexibility requirements, it’s unfair,” she said.
“This is a product for a community that is overmarketed and underserved.”
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