Both things you're weighing are live, and neither resolves as a general rule, because mortgage origination and finance lender licensing are set state by state and the answer for your state has to come from a licensed attorney or your state regulator directly. What I can give you is the map of where the lines usually sit so you know what to ask.
The federal consumer mortgage framework, the loan originator licensing regime, generally reaches loans secured by a dwelling made primarily for personal, family, or household purposes. A genuine business-purpose loan on a non-owner-occupied investment property is often outside it. That's the basis of the thing you read. Two problems with relying on it. First, business purpose is a factual determination about the actual use of the proceeds, not a label, and a borrower who moves into the flip converts your analysis after the fact. Second, a number of states layer their own lender or broker licensing on top with no consumer-purpose carve-out at all, and some of those statutes catch the person who arranges the loan for compensation, not just the person who funds it. Which bucket your state falls into is the question to put in writing to the regulator.
On the license-of-record question, in most states compensation earned for activity that falls within the scope of your real estate license has to flow through your sponsoring broker, and many brokerages have written policies about outside business activity regardless. Ask your broker before you take the first fee, because unwinding it later is a complaint waiting to happen.
The piece worth thinking about now: if you're paid per closed loan, you're paid to say yes. The lender is the one holding the collateral risk, so agree up front on who owns the underwriting file and what you're expected to verify versus merely pass along, or the first bad borrower becomes a dispute about what you told him.
