The cost of origination

Your underwriter doesn’t cost $95,000.

Most shops have never calculated what it costs to underwrite or process a file. Below, the math, and a calculator that runs on your numbers instead of ours.

Run your own numbers See the method
Run it on your own numbers

Four inputs, ten minutes.

Your payroll load. Your seat cost. Your supervision ratio. Your real cleared-file throughput over twelve months.

The seat

$
FICA, FUTA, SUTA, health, 401(k) match, PTO accrual. Most shops land between 25% and 40%.
$
LOS seat, hardware, AUS and verification tools, E&O share, workspace.
$
Loaded cost of the manager, divided by how many people report to them.

The output

Cleared files per person per month. Default is the 2018 MBA/STRATMOR retail benchmark. Use your own.
Files are more complex than they were in 2018. Set to zero if your throughput figure is already current.
Vacancy, ramp, PTO. Underutilization does not lower the cost of a seat; it raises the cost of every file that seat touches.

The alternative

$
Billed per file through clear-to-close, not per submission.

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Your cost per file
$681 $281 more than contract
At 100% utilization and 18.0 files a month.

Fully loaded, per year

$147,500
  • Base salary–
  • Payroll load–
  • Seat cost–
  • Supervision share–

Break-even against contract

What one seat clears 18.0
What break-even needs 30.7

At your volume, per year

30 files a month
All contract
In-house plus contract overflow

What this does not count

Turn-time cost (lock extensions, fallout, LO defection) is real and moves the answer further toward variable capacity, but quantifying it needs your own data. Ramp and severance are also excluded: hiring is not instant and firing is not free. Neither is in the numbers above, and both favour variable capacity.

Where the number comes from

The salary is the smallest number in the sentence.

Take a senior DE underwriter at a $95,000 base, a defensible market median. Then finish the sentence: payroll load, seat cost, and a share of the manager who exists whether or not you assign their cost to anyone.

Salary ÷ files $439 The figure most shops quote. Base salary over throughput, overhead ignored.
Loaded cost ÷ files $681 Plus payroll load, seat and supervision, and only at full utilisation.
Contract, per file $400 Agency underwriting, clear-to-close. No idle seat between files.

Both left-hand numbers come from the same arithmetic and sit $242 apart. That gap, across 217 files a year, is exactly the load, the seat and the manager left out of the sum.

The salary is 64% of the cost

One senior DE underwriter, per year, fully loaded

Fully loaded, per year$147,500
  • Base salary$95,000
  • Payroll load at 30%$28,500
  • Seat: LOS, AUS, hardware, E&O, space$9,000
  • Supervision, ~1 manager per 8$15,000

The break-even sits above the ceiling

Files per month, one underwriter

170% of capacity. The volume at which an in-house seat beats contract is higher than that seat can physically clear. One underwriter never gets there: not by working harder, only by being two people.

This is not an argument for outsourcing everything.

Cost never argues for hiring an underwriter; governance does. Exception authority, the agency response, the Friday escalation call. None of that is bought per file. What the math says is narrower: the cost of clearing a file is not a reason to keep the seat.

What is behind the defaults

Where our numbers come from, and where they stop.

Salaries

Salary.com and ZipRecruiter, August 2026. Senior DE underwriter $95,000; Underwriter I $65,281; senior loan processor $53,178; processor I $45,020.

Throughput

2018 MBA/STRATMOR Peer Group data, retail channel, published by STRATMOR Group: 19.2 files a month for underwriting, 9.4 for processing. The newest public figures available, and eight years old.

Fees

Commonwealth fulfillment services menu, August 2026. Underwriting is billed per file through clear-to-close, not per submission. Processing is billed per file, start to close.

Overhead

Planning estimates, not audited books. Seat cost and supervision share are the two inputs most worth replacing with your own before you trust an answer.

The full model at the defaults
Underwriting: in-house vs contract
Base salary, senior DE underwriter$95,000
Payroll load at 30%$28,500
Seat cost per head$9,000
Supervision share$15,000
Fully loaded, per year$147,500
Adjusted capacity18.05 / month · ~217 / year
Cost per file at 100% utilisation$681
Same underwriter at 80% utilisation$851
Underwriter I at $65,281 base$503
Contract underwriting, agency$400 per file
Break-even volume30.7 / month · 170% of capacity
Processing: the same shape
Senior processor, base$53,178
Fully loaded, per year$88,131
Adjusted capacity8.84 / month
Cost per file at 100% utilisation$831
Contract processing$600 per file
Break-even volume12.24 / month · 139% of capacity
Processors needed per underwriter2.04
A seasonal lender: 20 in the trough, 45 at peak, 390 a year
Staff to the peak: 3 underwriters$442,500
Staff to the average: 2 underwriters$295,000
Staff to the trough, contract the rest$216,870
All contract$156,000
Cost of keeping one in-house seat$60,870

Not modelled. Turn-time cost: lock extensions, fallout, LO defection. It is real, and it moves the answer further toward variable capacity, but quantifying it needs your own data. Ramp and severance are also excluded: hiring is not instant and firing is not free, and both favour variable capacity. Neither is in the numbers above.

Let's talk

We'd love to run the numbers with you.

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