Lender Secrets for Insurance Agents: What Ryan Shaffer of Axia Home Loans Wants You to Know
Hosts of The Insurance Dudes Podcast — 1,000+ episodes helping insurance agents build elite agencies
The mortgage lender sitting two offices down from your referral partner is one of the most underutilized lead sources in the insurance industry. Ryan Shaffer knows exactly why that relationship breaks down, and how to fix it from the lender's side of the table.
Fastest Growing Mortgage Firm, Most Overlooked Partnership
Axia Home Loans doesn't get talked about in insurance circles as often as it should. The firm has grown at a pace that puts it in a different category from regional mortgage shops and big-bank loan departments, and part of that growth comes from a culture that takes the homebuying experience, all of it, including the insurance piece, seriously.
Ryan Shaffer operates inside that culture, which means he has an unusually clear view of how the insurance agent fits into the home purchase transaction. Not how agents think they fit, how they actually fit, from the perspective of the person managing the timeline, the underwriting conditions, and the client relationship through the most stressful financial event of most people's lives.
That perspective is not always flattering to insurance agents. Ryan is diplomatic about it. But the gaps he identifies are real, and the agents who close those gaps have a genuine edge in building referral relationships with lenders who send them deal after deal without being chased.
What Lenders Actually Need From Insurance Agents
The lender-insurance agent relationship fails most often not because of bad intentions but because the two parties are optimizing for different things and don't realize it.
The lender is managing a closing date. Everything, from the appraisal to the title search to the insurance binder, has to land by a specific date or the whole deal is at risk. From the lender's perspective, an insurance agent who moves slowly, who is hard to reach, or who can't produce a binder quickly is not just annoying. They are a threat to the closing.
Most insurance agents don't fully appreciate how much that timing pressure matters to the lender's relationship with their client. The lender has promised their borrower a smooth closing. When the insurance piece creates friction, missed calls, delayed binders, last-minute coverage questions, the lender absorbs the client's frustration and starts thinking about whether they can find a more reliable insurance partner.
What lenders want from an insurance agent, according to Ryan:
First, speed. When a lender sends a lead, the expectation is a response within hours, not days. The lender's client is already in motion. They've made the offer, started the loan application, and they have a closing date in mind. An insurance agent who treats this like a cold lead and follows up in 48 hours is operating in a completely different reality than the lender.
Second, reliability on the binder. The insurance binder is a closing requirement. When a lender refers a client to an agent, they need to be able to tell that client "your agent will have your binder to the lender by X date" and trust that it will happen. The agents who have strong referral relationships with lenders are the ones who have earned that trust by delivering on time, every time, without having to be reminded.
Third, communication during the process. The lender doesn't need to be copied on every email, but they do need to know when there's a potential issue. If there's a coverage question, an underwriting flag, or a delay in binding, the agent who proactively communicates that to the lender is the agent who keeps the relationship. The agent who stays silent and hopes it works out is the one who loses the referral source permanently after the deal nearly falls apart.
The thing lenders wish insurance agents understood: Every home purchase client the lender sends you is a relationship client, not a transact-and-forget client. They just went through a major life event with the lender's help. They trust the lender's judgment. When the lender refers them to you, that trust transfers, temporarily. What you do with it determines whether it becomes permanent. Agents who treat lender referrals like purchased internet leads and chase them without delivering a premium experience destroy the referral relationship for everyone. Agents who treat every lender referral like a VIP client and report back to the lender on how it went build a pipeline that doesn't stop.
Building the Lender Relationship the Right Way
Ryan's experience gives him a clear picture of what a productive lender-agent relationship looks like, and it starts long before any deals get sent.
The agents who have the best referral relationships with lenders invested in the relationship before they needed anything from it. They showed up to the lender's office. They brought breakfast. They took the loan officer to coffee and asked genuine questions about what the officer's biggest pain points were, not to pitch themselves immediately, but to understand the business. They demonstrated that they were serious professionals who understood what mattered to a lender.
When a deal came up, those agents were the first ones the lender thought of, not because they'd asked to be referred, but because they'd built enough of a relationship that the lender knew they wouldn't embarrass them.
The discipline required to build lender relationships is not complicated. It's consistent. Pick five mortgage offices within a reasonable distance from your agency. Make contact with the top producer at each one. Don't pitch, listen. Find out what problems they have with their current insurance partners. Then solve those problems and don't be hard to reach.
What This Means for Your Agency
Map your referral partner landscape this week. Who sends you business right now, real estate agents, lenders, financial advisors, car dealers? For each category, rate the relationship on a scale of one to ten. A ten means they think of you first, every time, without prompting. A one means they might remember your name.
Your goal for the next 90 days is to take one relationship in each category from where it is to a seven or above. For the lender relationships specifically, focus on the operational side: make sure you have a documented process for handling lender referrals quickly, producing binders reliably, and communicating proactively. Then tell your lender partners about that process. Show them you've thought about their pain points and built a system around solving them.
The Bottom Line
Ryan Shaffer and Axia Home Loans represent what the best lender relationships look like from the other side of the table, professional, process-driven, and genuinely invested in the outcome for the client. The insurance agents who understand what lenders actually need, and who build their operations around delivering it consistently, don't need to chase referrals. They become the obvious choice.
Catch the full conversation:
About Ryan Shaffer: Mortgage professional at Axia Home Loans, one of the fastest-growing mortgage firms in the country. Brings a lender's perspective on what it takes to build productive, lasting referral relationships with insurance agents., Website
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