Rate has added a Dallas-based mortgage team led by Branch Manager Jorge Aldrete and Sales Manager Edgar Vazquez.
Aldrete and Vazquez join Rate from CrossCountry Mortgage. Their bilingual team will operate as Forza Lending Group, powered by Rate, and will focus partly on serving Hispanic and Spanish-speaking homebuyers.
“We’ve built a great business, so we weren’t looking to make a move unless we believed it could meaningfully improve what we can deliver to our customers and our team,” Aldrete said. “Rate checked the boxes on technology, platform and culture, but its commitment to the Hispanic market really stood out.”
Both leaders speak Spanish, as do most members of their team. Rate said the branch will use the company’s Spanish-language digital mortgage application, loan documents and marketing resources to serve borrowers in their preferred language.
“Our customers deserve the same great mortgage experience regardless of the language they prefer to use,” Vazquez said. “We saw a company making a real investment in that experience, not simply talking about it.”
Rate began expanding its Spanish-language mortgage infrastructure several years ago. The company, then known as Guaranteed Rate, introduced an expanded Language Access Program in 2022 to support Spanish-speaking borrowers throughout the mortgage process.
Todd Heaton, divisional executive vice president at Rate, said the team’s production experience and focus on Hispanic homebuyers support the lender’s growth strategy.
“This is a market that matters enormously to the future of homeownership in America, and Jorge and Edgar understand it firsthand,” Heaton said. “They wanted a company that was prepared to invest alongside them, from the technology a customer uses to apply for a mortgage to the documents and marketing that support the entire relationship.”
