BLACKWOOD — Department of Banking and Insurance Acting Commissioner Richard J. Badolato recently congratulated 19 students graduating from a class for Mortgage Loan Officers at Camden County Community College and told them that their training prepared them to serve a vital role in today’s economy. 

“As Mortgage Loan Officers you are an important part of a major sector of the economy,” Acting Commissioner Badolato said.  “First, you are guiding consumers through one of the largest purchase of their lives—their homes. Also, what happens in the mortgage industry can have a profound, rippling effect on the overall economy. So I urge you to take your jobs seriously and do them well.”

The Acting Commissioner was the keynote speaker at the graduation ceremonies for the Mortgage Loan Officer Training Program at Camden County Community College on January 8. The graduating students were instructed on the mortgage loan process in a five-week, 120-hour course that also prepared them to take the federally required Nationwide Mortgage License System and Registry Examination as well as Mortgage Loan Originator Examination required by the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance.

Mortgage Loan Officers, also known as a Mortgage Loan Originators, are individuals who directly or indirectly take a residential mortgage loan application, or offer or negotiates terms of a residential mortgage loan. In New Jersey, they are licensed by the Department of Banking and Insurance.

The funding for the course came from an Opportunity4Jersey grant from the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development; the Camden County One-Stop Career Center’s Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act; and the New Jersey Community College Consortium’s Ready-to-Work grant.  

Camden County Community College was awarded the grant for the first Mortgage Loan Officers class in September of 2013 and the first class graduated a month later. Since then, there have been five more graduating classes; two at Camden and three at Hudson County Community College, with the job placement rate for graduates at about 92 percent.