Paramount Residential Mortgage Group (PRMG) has hired a roughly 100-person team of loan officers, processors and underwriters from Gold Star Mortgage Financial Group, leaning on recruitment as its primary growth strategy.
Responsive Mortgage‘s move comes during what PRMG chief lending officer and partner Kevin Peranio described as a seasonal window for larger team transitions.
“I call this time of year the peak transition season,” Peranio said in an interview with HousingWire. “When the year slows down between August and February, larger teams typically make the moves.
“Everyone’s busy in the spring — it’s purchase season — so people don’t really make moves during that period. Then they have some time to reflect over the summer, and if they are going to make a transition, they typically do it when the leaves are changing.”
RETR data on loan officer migration patterns shows that LOs changed companies at a relatively steady pace throughout 2025, but “mega producers” that close more than 100 units per year have been more likely to move in October and May.
According to data from InGenius, 55 loan officers moved from Gold Star to PRMG. They’ve produced about $252 million since January, with most of that volume in Texas and Florida.
Peranio said the Responsive team, led by Mike Benton, had another proposal from a large retail lender that included a sizable signing bonus. But they chose PRMG based on what Peranio called a “cultural fit and a model match,” as well as alignment on technology.
“The Responsive team has proprietary technology in building relationships between Realtors and originators, and they wanted to continue to build that out and maximize the investment that they’ve made in their own technology,” Peranio said. “We plug into that technology to bring the loan into our fulfillment.”
PRMG has reached about $2.7 billion in total production year to date, per InGenius. Data from the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System shows the lender had 805 sponsored loan officers and 117 active branches as of Friday.
Gold Star, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has originated about $1.6 billion year to date, compared to $1.9 billion during the same period last year, per InGenius. NMLS shows Gold Star with 221 sponsored loan officers and 48 active branches. A spokesperson for Gold Star did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Peranio said PRMG is focused on organic growth and does not buy companies.
“We don’t acquire companies. We’re like a nice, slow, controlled grower. We’ve been around for 25 years,” he said. “Originators like to feel they control their destiny. And when a single owner — or whatever the ownership group is — just sells people to another group of people, it inherently doesn’t sit right. It’s like, what am I doing here if I can be sold to another company without my permission or being asked about it?”
Peranio added that when these transitions work, it is typically because there’s a leader within the group who’s transparent and communicates clearly with the team ahead of the move.
The Responsive team is the second large group — defined by PRMG as more than 20 people — to join the company in the past 90 days. Peranio said PRMG structures deals with upside on future revenue and offers some upfront funding to support transitions, rather than signing bonuses.
“If you write a check to trap someone for a certain amount of years, the reason that’s a trap is because the lenders that write those checks usually give them worse pricing,” Peranio said. “We think that doesn’t make any sense, especially when all pricing is getting more and more competitive in this new world of AI.”
