Embrace Home Loans (Getty)
Promoting a culture of giving.
Embrace Home Loans is headquartered in Middletown, RI. For nearly 40 years, the company has helped people buy homes in Rhode Island and beyond—and the company is committed to the communities it serves and its employees.
Peter Microulis, Consumer Ombudsman at Embrace Home Loans, has been working at the company for over three decades and says he has unique insight into the company’s history. “My specialty is regulatory compliance, which ensures the company’s adherence to laws and regulations,” Microulis shared. “The professional opportunities allotted to me and the positive culture at Embrace motivated me to develop a long-term career at Embrace.”
“I was never primed to be a businessperson. History was my passion and teaching it would have been my choice. When I wound up at Embrace, they presented me with an opportunity to use the kinds of skills that would have been applicable to teaching and found a unique method of weaving them into the needs of a mortgage lender. For over 30 years that combination helped me to achieve my dreams, and I believe helped the corporation focus on regulatory compliance and its key role in the lending business.”
Microulis discussed how the company began. In 1983, Dennis Hardiman, the CEO and President of Embrace Home Loans noticed interest rates had fallen five points, which inspired him to begin a company to help people save money on their mortgages. “Our first office was in East Providence. We started as a very small second mortgage company and grew through the years, adding new states to our geographic footprint. As a result, we now cover the entire country.” After the company outgrew its original location, it moved to a larger building in Middletown, where it’s still located today.
Part of what has made Embrace successful over the years is its commitment to providing its customers with a positive experience and maintaining a family culture for its employees.
"It's important to us that the consumer's experience with Embrace is satisfying. We proactively measure our customer service. Through this process, we're finding what consumers prefer, what we can do better and what we can do differently. That's what this is all about. There's nothing in this business that is not about the customer. And at the end of the day, we're not getting the job done if we can't service the customer," Microulis said.
Switching gears to what it’s like to work at Embrace, the Consumer Ombudsman shared, in his opinion, why it’s a great place to work. “The answer is not necessarily a simple one to put into words. But if I might attempt to do so, Embrace is successful at what it does, and it shares that success, that feeling of accomplishment with the employees. Staff at Embrace look upon each other as family and their roles at Embrace as their contribution to the family’s success. Like any place, it might not be a situation that would suit anyone, but those who make up the core of Embrace’s staff wear this badge proudly.”
In addition to supporting its customers, Embrace promotes a culture of caring. Giving back is an essential part of the company’s culture at the corporate and employee levels. Each year the company donates a portion of its earnings to charities.
“I believe that everyone is inclined to give back if they find themselves in the right circumstances. At Embrace, giving back is engrained in the fabric of the company via a top-down approach. The owner and CEO, Dennis Hardiman, not only holds those ideals close to his heart, but he made sure to establish benefit policies that helped to prepare those ‘right circumstances’ for his employees. Every Embrace employee is allowed to donate 100 hours of their time annually to a charitable organization at full pay. Each May, in conjunction with the company’s anniversary, the entire company participates in an outreach day where they might donate their efforts in groups to assist non-profit agencies around the state. And for those who make monetary contributions to charity, Embrace provides matching funds to those charities, up to $2500 per employee, per year, upon request.”
When asked what he likes best about working in Rhode Island, Microulis answered, “While Embrace is a national lender and is licensed in all 50 states, the opportunity to serve Rhode Island is special because, while it might not be commonly known, Rhode Island is quite small. And being a Rhode Islander makes one part of a relatively tight-knit community, at least for reasons that are unique to this state. So often, serving Rhode Islanders has the feeling of doing good for our neighbors, cousins, schoolmates—people whom we know and understand.”
For more information about Embrace Home Loans, check out their BBB Business Profile. To learn more about BBB and read more stories like this, visit Behind the Business Stories.
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