Mortgages go Messianic

We know that CEOs tend to have big egos – sometimes even delusions of grandeur. But it seems that Patrick Flood, the former CEO of Christian mortgage lender HomeBanc, has a fully fledged Messianic Complex. The WSJ's Valerie Bauerlein spoke to him in the wake of HomeBanc's implosion:

Mr. Flood, the former CEO whose January severance package was $5 million, plans to start another faith-based mortgage company. He says HomeBanc employees and customers will take what they learned and plant the seeds wherever they land. "When Jesus got on the cross, people at the time thought that he failed because he died and the ministry ended," he said. "But people around him have cascaded it into the greatest movement in history. The company being a financial failure doesn't mean that the work has ended."

Bauerlein's article paints HomeBanc to be a cult which locked employees into three-year contracts and hired them only if they were willing to push the company's products to their friends and family. I sincerely hope that Flood's new company never gets off the ground. Right now, what mortgage lending needs is less in the way of charismatic leaders, and more in the way of reality-based underwriting.