Loan officers change companies all year long, and the share of moves climbs every quarter until it peaks in the fourth. In the move data I review with my coaching clients, about 19% of a year’s moves land in Q1, and by Q4 that number climbs to roughly 29%. That makes fall the busiest recruiting season on the calendar. It’s also when most of the recruiting leaders I coach get buried in year-end production and holiday schedules and quietly stop showing up. Below, I’ll walk you through when loan officers move, what pulls them in Q4, and the five things I tell leaders to do in September so they’re the first call by December.
When do loan officers change companies
Moves aren’t spread evenly across the year. This is how the share of annual moves breaks down in the data I track with clients:
- Q1: about 19%
- Q2: about 24%
- Q3: about 26%
- Q4: about 29%
Loan officer mobility rate is the share of producing loan officers who switch companies in a given year, and that rate has been falling. RETR data reported by HousingWire shows loan officer mobility dropped from 24% in 2023 to 20.6% in 2025. The report points to compensation compression and a wait-and-see approach as the reasons fewer people are moving. Top producers move even less often. MMI’s turnover data shows they change companies about every four years.
When you put those two facts together, fewer loan officers are moving, so every move is more contested. The leaders winning those moves are the ones who were in the relationship long before the loan officer started looking.
Why loan officers make the move in Q4
The calendar invites a fresh start
I say this constantly: people move from desire, not pain. The loan officers you’d want on your team aren’t miserable. They’re comfortable, and comfort doesn’t change until something makes them picture a better next year. Q4 is when that picture forms. It’s when they sit down to plan next year’s income, their goals, and the kind of business they want to be running. Every year heading into the holidays, I tell the leaders I coach that the next six weeks will have more people in conversations about making a change than any other point on the calendar.
Pipelines slow and there’s room to think
Purchase volume usually softens after the summer. This August I sat down with a leader and walked through three years of pending home sales data. Once the summer spike faded, every year tracked the others almost exactly. When a loan officer’s pipeline thins out in the fall, they have time they didn’t have in June to wonder whether their current company is the place they’ll grow. Market softness is a recruiting window if you see it early.
Most top producers are already looking on their own
Back in 2017, I came across survey data showing that most top producers weren’t being recruited into their next company. They were finding it on their own. That’s when I decided I had to become the expert on personal branding, and years of coaching since have kept confirming it. When a top producer starts thinking about a move in October, they aren’t waiting for your call. They’re searching, and they find the leaders who’ve been visible and valuable all year.
Why most recruiting leaders miss the window
Most recruiting leaders I talk to assume nobody changes jobs at year end. So they coast into January and plan to restart the pipeline after the holidays. Meanwhile, Q4 is when every demand on a leader peaks: closings to push through, budgets to finalize, and a team that wants your attention before the year closes out.
The season when top producers move is the season when you’ll have the least time to recruit. Unless you protect that time on purpose, the season will take all of it.
How to recruit loan officers in Q4
This is what I coach leaders to start doing now:
- Build your follow-up system before the wave. Your Forever Follow-Up, a scheduled cadence of touches for every recruit on your list, needs to be running in September. Build it in November and you’re building it while the moves are happening.
- Bring your Dream 100 real value once a month. That means a playbook, a market insight, or something a loan officer would pay for. Every piece of value you give now positions you as the leader they know and trust by the time they’re ready to move.
- Put a live event on the calendar for late September or October. Time the invitation to the moment recruits start thinking about a change, then plan every value touch backward from the event date.
- Stay visible through the holidays. When every competitor goes quiet in December, a simple personal note to your top recruits stands out more than it would in any other month of the year.
- Plan your Q1 now. Q4 is the peak, but it’s only a few points above Q3. The quarter I’d worry about more is Q1, because volume drops in January and the checks get bigger, which makes it the harder fight. The leader who plans Q1 in October isn’t scrambling in February.
The leader they already trust
By the time a loan officer calls you in December, the relationship has to already be there. The leaders I’ve watched land their biggest hires in Q4 won them with value, not a bigger check. They did it one monthly touch at a time, starting in the slow weeks when nobody else was paying attention.
If you want help building your own Q4 plan, come join me at the Working Lunch. It’s a free one-hour session every other Friday at 12 PM Eastern where we take real recruiting problems and work through them live, together. There’s no pitch and nothing to buy. Save your seat on the Working Lunch calendar.
Frequently Asked Questions
When do most loan officers change companies?
According to recruiting coach Richard Milligan’s client data, the share of loan officer moves rises every quarter and peaks in Q4, at roughly 29% of annual moves compared with about 19% in Q1.
What percentage of loan officers change companies each year?
RETR puts loan officer mobility at 20.6% in 2025, down from 24% in 2023.
Is Q4 a bad time to recruit loan officers?
No. Q4 is the most active quarter for loan officer moves. Many recruiting leaders go quiet at year end, which leaves more room for the ones who stay visible.
Why do loan officers switch companies at the end of the year?
Year end is when loan officers plan the next year, pipelines slow after the summer, and there’s time to evaluate whether their current company fits the business they want to build.
How often do top producers change companies?
MMI’s turnover data shows top producers change companies about every four years.
How should a recruiting leader prepare for Q4 recruiting?
Build a follow-up system by September, bring your top recruits value once a month, host a live event in late September or October, stay visible through the holidays, and plan Q1 before January.
About Richard Milligan
I spent 15 years in mortgage as a loan officer, producing branch manager, and divisional leader, and I built 21 teams along the way, 18 of them in my last three and a half years. In 2017 I founded 4C Recruiting to help leaders skip the years it took me to figure recruiting out. I’m the author of How to Dominate Recruiting in a Digital World and host of the Recruiting Conversations podcast.