Castle Mortgage Corporation was founded upon the following priciples in order to ensure that you, the customer, always receive the highest quality products and services. Please read the following in order to understand the underlying philosophy upon which Castle Mortgage Corporation was built.

A GENERAL STATEMENT OF POLICY

All of our personnel policies at Castle Mortgage Corporation are shaped around certain ideals and principles that are believed to create the most productive working environment.

The following statement describes such ideals and principles, and the demands that they place on the Company, the individual and on our working relationships.

This policy is our statement of creed; it represents our "way of life." From Castle Mortgage Corporation's inception and throughout its life cycle, the policy will continue to present the ideals, standards and requirements of our Company.

A GENERAL STATEMENT OF POLICY

Two Products

We have two basic products at Castle Mortgage Corporation:

- Products or service that is genuinely unique and useful,
excellent in quality, done well and efficiently, so that
they present an attractive value to the public and an
attractive profit to the Company.

- A worthwhile working life for each member of the Company,
a worthwhile life that calls out the member's best talents
and skills - in which he or she shares in the responsibilities
and the rewards.

These Two Products are inseparable. The Company prospers most, and its members find their jobs most worthwhile, when its members are contributing their full talents and efforts to creating, producing and selling products of outstanding merit.

The Principles We Follow

We serve both products if we create a working environment that encourages those human traits that are productive both for the individual and for the group. This environment would be shaped around these principles:

* Most of us tend to be more industrious when we feel the job is worth doing and challenging.
* We tend to act more responsibly when we are put in charge of our own actions and are held accountable for them.
* We tend to give our minds to the job, as well as our time, if we understand the group's objectives and see how our work fits into them.
* We tend to work better if we see that we can get ahead by making more of ourselves.
* We tend to work better when there is mutual respect, mutual concern and mutual honesty among us as human beings, despite the status of our jobs.

The Demands to be Met

To create this productive environment places demands 1) on the Company 2) on each of us as individual members of the Company, and 3) on the working relationships between the members of each group and their leaders.

Demands Upon Us as Individuals

To create this environment calls for Company policies and organized ways for putting these policies into practice that will:
1. provide clear, challenging and profitable Company objectives;
2. focus the efforts of all in the Company through the clear statement of these objectives, full discussion of the responsibilities we undertake to achieve them, and clear reporting of results;
3. design jobs to use equipment, methods and talent to best effect;
4. demand conscientious, skillful performance from every member regardless of the pay level or status of the job. Recognize excellence, pay well for it, respect it. Discourage shoddy performance, correct it if practicable, reject it if not;
5. provide opportunity for personal growth through continuous training and education, career planning and counseling, work force forecasting, and job posting;
6. recognize the importance of our pay-and-benefit rules and our other personnel policies as the footing on which we all must stand in our relations with each other and with Castle Mortgage Corporation as a Company. View these policies as the law of our land, to be shaped through vigorous participation of all those whose lives it affects - to be studied and reshaped with all the wisdom and ingenuity we can summon as we see new needs and new opportunities.

Demands Upon Us as Individuals

These demands upon the Company are matched by similar demands upon all of us as individual members, whatever our status, whatever our level of pay. To:
1. take the same adult view of our obligations and responsibilities on the job as we take off the job as members of our families and home communities;
2. demand the best of ourselves in the performance of our assigned jobs, despite our status or pay level;
3. recognize and help to meet the obligation we share with the other members of our working group to accomplish the group's objectives;
4. prepare for, and take in stride, the rapid changes that go along with the rapid growth of the Company - changes in the make-up of our work group, in the equipment we handle, and in the character and location of our work;
5. manage our time responsibly; understand that merely being present does not, by itself, perform the job, that, nevertheless, to perform the job we have to be present; that our value to the Company (and our pay and our progress) depends on our attendance as well as on our talent and effort;
6. expect, as responsible individuals, to get individual treatment under our special circumstances and be willing to see others get different treatment under their different circumstances. In our relation with other in our work groups in the Company, rely on give-and-take, over a period of time, to balance out differences in treatment;
7. recognize our obligations to stockholders, customers, and to other members of the Company.

Demands Upon Our Working Relationships

Our success also hinges on the kind of working relationship between team leaders and team members that evokes full responsibility of every individual and focuses it on the Company's objectives.

This relationship calls for something like this way of working together:
1. The supervisor presents to the members of the group the total objective: "Here is the objective we have to accomplish: what, when, and why."
2. He or she calls on every member of the group to share the responsibility for accomplishing the objective: "As part of your job, share with me the task of working out the overall plan our group will follow to meet the objective and our individual parts in the plan."
3. Everybody clearly understands his or her responsibility, accepts it, and answers for his or her own performance within the plan.
4. The leader helps the group work out changes in group plans as the job proceeds; helps individuals work out changes in their individual plans: "How do we handle this new situation? What do we do to meet our objective in spite of this obstacle?"
5. The leader keeps all informed on progress and problems; keeps the group's objective in sharp focus as part of the total Company objective. "Here is where the whole Company program stands. How do we go on from here?"
Different groups will develop different ways of working. The same groups will shift its gears for different loads and speeds. But the essential idea remains: a working relationship in which all are concerned with the group's objective and doing their best to achieve it.

...For Those of Us In Supervisory Jobs

You are the member of your work group who must answer for the performance of your work group-answering for meeting schedules, for costs, and for the responsible action and effectiveness of your group in accomplishing the objectives undertaken by the group.

Treat those you supervise as you expect to be treated by your supervisor, with the same individual consideration and sensitivity, and with the same demands for performance and responsible behavior.

...For All

We are pioneering here at Castle Mortgage Corporation in new ways of working together. We enjoy unusual privileges, and in return we undertake some unusual responsibilities.

Like all privileges, there have to be written guides to go with them to be sure they are being uniformly and fairly administered. The unusual responsibility we assume is to use judgment in applying these guides. We don't want to follow them blindly, just to make decisions easy. We don't want people to say, "You have to do it that way because the book says so." We don't want everything to have to be spelled out exactly in black and white. We do want consideration and thought behind our rules and their administration.

We must be prepared to see and tolerate differences in working practices and in treatment from individual to individual and from group to group-accepting these differences as unavoidable and, indeed, essential as we replace rigid rule with reasoned judgment in applying our principles in differing circumstances.

Castle Mortgage Corporation is a licensed First and Second Mortgage Lender in the State of Connecticut. Equal Housing Lender. Equal Opportunity Lender.

Last modified on Monday, July 15, 1996