CIVIC Hires Visionary Lending Lender

CIVIC Financial Services is thrilled to announce its latest acquisition, a new CEO. William J. Tessar, most recently with Skyline Financial Corporation, joined CIVIC as its new President and CEO in March.

Tessar comes to CIVIC with more than 30 years of mortgage experience and a track record of successfully growing lending operations. Prior to CIVIC, he founded and served as President at three lending companies. Capital Line, one of his companies, was recognized as a top originating brokerage in the state of California. In 2007, Capital Line merged with Skyline Home Loans, and Tessar was named President of Retail Lending. In his 10 years at Skyline, he scaled the organization from a retail mortgage company funding $40M per month into a multi-channel originator with $3.5B funded annually.

Now CIVIC will be the beneficiary of Bill’s expertise in building and leading teams. CIVIC, a private money lender that has grown from start-up to lending leader in just four years, is at the perfect point in its lifecycle to benefit from Bill’s leadership.

Jim Helfrich, Co-Founder and Partner of CIVIC, said “Bill’s leadership, talent, and history of success has already made him a key addition to the CIVIC family. His vision and execution track record is exactly what CIVIC needs as we enter our next chapter. His appointment is a sign of our commitment to being the leading company in our industry.”

In assessing CIVIC’s market position and potential, Tessar says “Private equity lending is a $50B industry, and the top 10 lenders in the space account for only 10% of that, so it’s an extremely fragmented, inefficient space.” Having recruited and trained more than 500 loan officers over his 30-year career in lending, Bill will focus on streamlining the loan process and making the sales and operations teams work cohesively. “Our customers will see the immediate benefits of streamlined processes that result in flawless execution and superior service” says Tessar.

CIVIC was created by its parent companies Wedgewood and HMC Assets LLC, to serve investors who don’t fit traditional lending criteria. Wedgewood and HMC, two of the most respected names in residential real estate, provide CIVIC with unparalleled real estate valuation expertise as well as access to low-cost capital. With these resources, CIVIC is able to keep all operations in-house so loans are managed more closely, quickly, and efficiently.

In making the decision to join CIVIC, Tessar says “the combination of Wedgewood’s vertically-integrated fix and flip business and HMC’s prowess in non-performing loan acquisition makes CIVIC the biggest mortgage opportunity I’ve seen in the last 30 years of lending. CIVIC has access to some of the lowest cost of capital in the industry due to the fact that we de-lever risk in a unique, proprietary way while being best-in-class on valuation as well as a market leader in default resolution.”

Couple that with competitive rates, customer-centric core values, lightning-quick funding and now superior leadership under Bill Tessar, CIVIC is poised to become the premier private money lender in the country.