Business View Magazine May 2023

165 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 5 AX IA HOME LOANS of service so they can flow that through to their referral network and their borrowers,” he elaborates. Other tech tools have led to successful mortgage outcomes for Axia including their popular mobile app. “If you are a borrower, you can pretty much run the entire process through your phone at this stage if you want to, and tools like this help.” Rosenblum also highlights Axia’s responsible management of liquidity and its finances as well as balanced stakeholder management which he terms “balance sheet sustainability.” Perhaps most importantly, how Axia Loans has chosen to pivot its business model has enabled it to stand out from its competitors and has helped the company enjoy continued success. In 2016, Axia chose to adopt the ESOP model which is a form of a retirement model, enabling employees to be partial owners of the company and have a direct retirement stake in the company as well as often benefit from yearly bonuses based on shared revenue. The ESOP model is taking off across the US, however, Axia was the first 100% employee-owned mortgage company. “We went straight to the 100% ESOP setup and set up a note for the shareholders. They swapped their equity for debt, and we have since paid off that note,” Rosenblum outlines. “The note was originally supposed to be a nine- year term, but we had a big boom year in 2020 and 2021 and we paid it off in five years.” “We are now 100% debt-free and 100% employee-owned. Over the last six years, we have created an enormous amount of equity for our employees and as of the last stock price the average value for our employees was around $50,000 but ranged up to $250,000. Rosenblum outlines that the ESOP model creates a meaningful financial benefit to the employees that work so hard to make the company profitable. “It is a win-win.”