Andrew Deyo Joins NEXA Lending, Bringing a Proven Growth Mindset and a Mission to Expand BDM

Army veteran and accomplished mortgage producer joins NEXA with approximately $100 million in team production and a vision for creating new opportunities through NEXA's Business Development Marketing program.

PHOENIX, Oct. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Andrew Deyo has spent his career learning how to build people.

First, it was in the United States Army, where he served for 13 years, completed two deployments and ultimately became one of the Army's top recruiters. Then it was in mortgage, where he went from entering an industry, he knew almost nothing about to becoming a top producer and building a branch that generated approximately $280 million in annual production.

Now, Deyo is bringing that growth mindset to NEXA Lending. Deyo has joined NEXA along with a group representing approximately $100 million in annual mortgage production, including roughly $60 million of his own expected production this year. But the numbers are only part of what brought him to NEXA. After evaluating multiple opportunities and studying the economics behind each model, Deyo saw something in NEXA that aligned closely with the philosophy he credits for much of his own success: give talented people the economics, infrastructure and opportunity to grow, then get out of their way.

"NEXA's model was just clean," Deyo said. "I built out the P&Ls. I looked at the economics. I asked a lot of questions. What I kept coming back to was how much opportunity there was here to actually build. I really feel like, from the financial side, NEXA empowers you to grow. It was compelling enough that even a sign-on bonus worth more than three-quarters of a million dollars somewhere else wasn't enough to sway my decision," Deyo added. "I wasn't looking at what I could make on day one. I was looking at what I could build over the long term, and for me, NEXA was the clear choice."

At the center of that opportunity for Deyo is NEXA's Business Development Marketing program, known as BDM. The program is designed to create additional avenues for qualified participants to build business relationships and expand their reach within NEXA's platform, subject to applicable program requirements.

For Deyo, it was one of the biggest differentiators in his decision.

"My mission is to blow up the BDM program," Deyo said. "I've seen what happens when you give the right people the right economics and an opportunity to grow. People I worked with doubled their businesses. Some did even more than that. When I started understanding what NEXA had built with BDM and thinking about what could be done with it, that got me really excited."

That excitement is shared by NEXA Lending CEO Geri Farr, who has been instrumental in developing and expanding the BDM program.

"Andrew didn't just look at BDM and see another program. He immediately started seeing possibilities," Farr said. "That is what excites me most about having him at NEXA. He understands how to develop people, he understands how to create growth, and he is already thinking about how he can use BDM to create opportunities we haven't even reached yet. I cannot wait to see what he builds here."

Deyo's path to NEXA also represents a full-circle moment in his mortgage career.

After leaving the Army, Deyo initially entered mortgage as a broker before making a deliberate decision to learn the business at a deeper level. He joined the high-producing team led by Krystal Stearns who is now also with NEXA from the UMortgage acquisition, taking on a junior loan officer role and immersing himself in the day-to-day mechanics of originating at scale.

Deyo credits that experience with giving him the repetition and foundation that helped shape the producer and leader he would eventually become.

"I started with Krystal knowing almost nothing," Deyo said. "I was sitting in her living room asking her a million questions while she was working on loans and taking care of her kids. I had the privilege of learning inside a team operating at an incredibly high level. Not everybody gets that opportunity, and so much of what I know today came from getting that repetition and learning from her."

Years later, after Deyo built a significant production business of his own, the two will once again be building on the same platform.

"Watching Andrew's growth has been incredibly special because I remember how it started," said Krystal Stearns. "He came in hungry to learn, asked questions constantly and was willing to put in the work to understand this business from the ground up. What he has built since then speaks for itself. To now have Andrew at NEXA and have the opportunity to build alongside him again is truly a full-circle moment, and I could not be more excited about what is ahead for him."

Deyo's rise in mortgage has been rapid. After developing his foundation on Stearns' team, he returned to individual production and generated approximately $22 million during his first six months before producing approximately $57 million the following year. He eventually built a branch that reached approximately $280 million in annual production, with a model centered on empowering producers and creating an environment where they could grow.

For NEXA Executive Partner and Founder Mike Kortas, that philosophy makes Deyo a natural fit for the company.

"Andrew understands that the way you build something big is by creating opportunities for other people to win with you," Kortas said. "He has already proven he can produce at a high level, but what gets me excited is that he thinks beyond his own production. He wants to build people, build businesses and create more opportunity. Give someone like Andrew the economics, technology and platform to do that, and then let him go build."

Deyo also pointed to NEXA's broader economics, technology and evolving platform as factors in his decision. But his approach to joining NEXA mirrors the way he has approached much of his career: understand the system, learn how it works and then determine how to make it bigger.

That mentality can be traced all the way back to his years in Army recruiting. Deyo entered mortgage without an established playbook for building a mortgage business, so he applied many of the same principles he had learned while recruiting meet people, build relationships, understand what they need and find ways to help.

Five years later, those principles have helped him become a high-producing originator, build a nine-figure branch and develop other mortgage professionals into stronger producers.

His next challenge is seeing how much further that philosophy can scale.

For Deyo, joining NEXA is not simply about moving an existing book of business onto a new platform. It is about gaining the infrastructure to build the next version of it, while creating more opportunities for the people who build alongside him.

And if the trajectory of his first five years in mortgage is any indication, Deyo is just getting started.

SOURCE NEXA Lending