Lender Ltd.

                                    Lender Ltd.
      7789 East M-36 | Whitmore Lake, MI 48189-9715
            Phone (810) 231-8600 | Fax (810) 231-9273

"Who we are"
written by Jim Wickham (as of January 2007)

Lender Ltd. has been working diligently to build a different type of Mortgage Company. A mortgage company with the experience and strength of a large mortgage banker, and the aggressive sales and flexibility of a small mortgage broker.

1996 – Metro Mortgage Corporation / Integrity Home Loans

After a successful run as President & CEO of Republic Bancorp Mortgage, Inc. Rick Shaffner reopens Metro Mortgage Corporation. Rick originally opened Metro Mortgage in 1984, my Father was one of his original partners. Rick re-opened Metro with a mission to become the leader in providing opportunities where the mortgage professional's entrepreneurial spirit can grow and prosper. That same year I left my net branch operation with Pioneer Mortgage, a mortgage broker, to form Integrity Home Loans, Inc. I was accustomed to the benefits of being a Mortgage Banker and having full control on how to handle our business. These are some of the benefits we felt were lost when we became a broker. Integrity becomes a DBA of Metro Mortgage allowing Integrity to use the Metro warehouse line and operate as a FNMA seller/servicer.

1997 – Key Mortgage / Home Loan Specialists

Chris Hoehn, an originator who worked with us at Republic decides to open an operation similar to the arrangement Metro had with Integrity. Chris opened Key Mortgage, Inc. Chris had a strong Realtor base of referrals along with a great working knowledge of FHA loans. Later that year my good friend Craig Olmsted, who was the Vice President for a very successful mortgage broker, shared with me he was thinking of leaving his current employer to open a mortgage broker operation of his own. I suggested he follows the same path as Integrity and Key and opened Home Loan Specialists, Inc.

1998 – Lender Ltd. / Metro of Owosso / Heritage, Family, & Creative

Realizing there were major benefits to doing business this way and knowing there were many entrepreneurs who would benefit from the concept, we officially change the name of the company from Metro Mortgage Corporation to Lender Ltd. Simultaneously we made all four operations DBA's of Lender Ltd. This more defined structure would then open the door for us to create what we refer to as the “IOC Division” of Lender Ltd. These Independent Operation Centers would be able to handle the loan process from A-Z internally utilizing the automated systems developed and/or enhanced by Lender Ltd. Having all the IOC’s using the same basic software was just the beginning. We have been pushing forward to better streamline the process of obtaining a mortgage for the consumer and more importantly defining better systems to move loans from application to servicing. We are also offering as much support as needed for the IOC Presidents in regards to both operating a mortgage company and being an entrepreneur.

This was a great year of growth for Lender. Not only did we formalize our structure but added Heritage Mortgage in Wyandotte, opened a branch of Integrity in Novi, and opened an IOC in Owosso. In Owosso we were fortunate to meet Jerry Meyer. Jerry was a successful entrepreneur but had no mortgage background. He was able to quickly learn the basics of the business and started Metro of Owosso from day one employing the Lender systems and routines as their operational foundation. Later that year we also opened Family Home Loans in Howell and Creative Mortgage Funding in Livonia.

1999 – Northern, TBL.com, Arrow, and Intrigue

With growth comes change! With Lenders role growing we felt now was an appropriate time to open a corporate headquarters. In April 99, we began utilizing our new space at 201 East Main in Northville. Accounting, Administration, and Automation along with the Executive offices are now under one roof. Starting in 1999, we also followed our model change from start up operations to existing operations by bringing on Northern Financial Group, an existing broker in the Farmington area as well as Arrow Home Loans in Farmington Hills.

Realizing the tremendous impact the internet was having on our daily business and with our already strong beliefs in the potential and necessity of using technology to its fullest it made sense for our next step to be an online type mortgage origination channel. We had the opportunity to form a relationship with individuals experienced in the impact of automation in the lending process who had already put together "thebestloan.com" as a 100% Internet based Mortgage Company. That same year the “web division” of a local Mortgage Banker also joined Lender under the brand Intrigue Mortgage Funding.

January 2000 – Citizens / CMC / Hometown / Wholesale (COG)

One of our main focuses for 1999 was to form business partnerships with existing Mortgage Brokers versus doing start up companies. We were fortunate to run into Ken Parr and Rick Seaton at Citizens Mortgage in Bloomfield Hills. They now operate as Citizens Mortgage Funding in Oakland County and Florida under Ken Parr and Cheryl Shafer, and in Wayne County as CMC under the direction of Rick Seaton.

Lender Ltd. Wholesale is our wholesale arm, which purchases loans originated by brokers. We ran this division out of Metro Mortgage in Northville. Our goal with the wholesale division was to work with 10 – 15 key accounts with the intent to use this vehicle as a learning curve for potential IOC’s. We operate a wholesale like environment to this day at our corporate office under the direction of Lee Ann Grieb. We refer to our wholesale approach today as the “COG”, our centralized operations group. Today the focus is more on supporting the existing IOC’s in niche products, government lending, and more advanced secondary marketing execution.

With 10 solid years under our belt - Rick and I have built a great level of trust and confidence in one another. At this point Rick wanted to focus on the continued growth and development of new business plans for Lender as a whole. Rick appointed me the President and Chief Operations Officer for Lender. Rick stayed on as Chairman and CEO but would now have more time to focus on other business plans.

2001 – Lender Ltd. / Corporate Restructuring

We continue to modify the details while focusing on staying true to our business goals and objectives. Over the past few years we have opened many IOC’s and closed a few as well. A quick run down on where we stand, the closed IOC’s first. We have parted ways with;

Family Home Loans, Creative Mortgage Funding, Northern Financial

The Best Loan, Arrow Home Loans, Intrigue Mortgage, Heritage Mortgage

Common themes, with the exception of Allerton, the other group all were opened in 1998 or 1999. Coming off the heels of a great year in the mortgage business like 1998 good sales people want to make an effort on their own. During the year we were approached by CFI, a public company out of Florida looking to acquire a Midwest mortgage shop. They were intrigued by our business plan and wanted to grow the IOC concept on a regional level versus the state level we had developed. After a few months of negotiations, CFI and Lender appeared to have different long-term goals and CFI could not secure the financing as offered in the letter of intent. We let the time frame expire and kept on our original course as a privately held company.

With Lenders growth plan and my own added responsibilities a gap had developed internally at Lender Ltd. We have promoted Craig Olmsted to Executive Vice President and he will handle many of the day-to-day loan level issues that come up with the IOC’s. In the years to come Craig would be promoted again to President of Lender and Michele Horton would fill our EVP position.

2002 – Continued Corporate Restructuring / SMG

With our continued growth and the growth of each individual IOC, we have decided to re-focus ourselves with some internal audit controls and a bigger commitment to processes involved with automated underwriting of all product lines. Michele Horton was promoted to Senior Vice President of Lender overseeing compliance and underwriting. (later she becomes our EVP as Craig was made President) In 2002 we also opened SMG as a division of Lender, they were a broker in the Troy area which was operated under the direction of Ed Platte.

Rick and I opened Lender with the original intent that I would acquire his portion of Lender stock over a 10-year period. Due to some other personal goals we both have - Rick and I agreed to move that target date up by 3 years. We executed a revised agreement making me the sole shareholder of Lender in 2003. Rick will be spending his full time effort to achieve his personal goal of opening a community bank in Northville. He achieved that goal in the spring of 2004 with the grand opening of Main Street Bank.

2003 – ISC Division / Priority Home Loans / City Federal / Skytrust and Lake State

We created a central operations center to allow Originators in the field to grow into an IOC in time. They will start with the origination function, and in time take on processing, underwriting, closings, and loan delivery. The operations center has a dual purpose, one to facilitate the transactions in process as needed. The second function is as a training center so when the originator goes to make the transition to an IOC President they have all the systems and routines as part of their process. We hired Mike Gleason to lead this division which is operated as a true Net Branch network under the Metro Mortgage division of Lender.

In 2003 we also opened Priority Home Loans under the direction of Terri Brown in Northville. Priority Home Loans came to Lender in 2002 as a sales team under Terri’s direction, in a short period of time they evolved into their own brand and branch. We also opened two divisions in Grand Rapids, City Federal under the direction of Todd Wolffis and Lake State (Kurt Gallert) along with a location in Ann Arbor known as Skytrust under the direction of Lee Ann Grieb. We also acquired a building in Hamburg this year and have begun to remodel the building.

2004 – Executive Committee / Equity Capital / St. Clair Home Loans

Our building renovation project is finally complete and we have moved. Part of that move was the promotion of Craig Olmsted to President of Lender Ltd. and the promotion of Michele Horton to Executive Vice President of Lender Ltd. The entire Executive Committee now has an office at our corporate headquarters. We have improved our technology resources, given ourselves some much needed space, and finally have all the right people under one roof! One of the reasons for the move to Hamburg was to create space to develop a new component of Lender Ltd. We have developed a Centralized Operations Group at our Main Office. It is a spin-off or our original wholesale plan, now we call it the “COG”! Its function is to allow some aspects of the routines we run on a loan level basis to be centralized. Underwriting, Closings, Insuring, and Loan Delivery of Government Loans and other Niche Products will be our focus. We then took it one-step further and started publishing an internal rate sheet to allow bulk delivery of conventional products if an Originator chose to deliver the loan to Lender versus one of the other investors we are approved with. It is structured like an Investor to the IOC’s. We hope to see this evolve and grow into a main selling feature for future candidates to make the decision to join Lender Ltd

We opened two new IOC’s this year as well. Craig Tanis has operated Equity Capital for years in Adrian as a Broker. He and his group are well rooted in the community and well respected as Mortgage Professionals. They now operate as a Mortgage Banker under the Lender umbrella. The second IOC is Mike Cyplik and his team at St. Clair Home Loans. They are the first IOC to evolve out of our ISC Division which was created in 2003. Mike and his team have a strong local presence in their market and have strong professional resumes which compliment their stellar local reputation. The St. Clair team started in late 2003 and in just over a year evolved through training and practical experience into their IOC towards the end of this year. Their growth and training process worked out very well and was instrumental in helping Lender get the ISC Division off the ground.

2005 – Year of Improvement

During a post refinance boom run Lender typically has a chance to clean up a little - like most mortgage companies. The other thing we focus on during these slow times is our operational efficiencies. We are proud to report that in 2005 we met all nine (9) of our operational goals. We revamped all of our HR agreements, all of our closed loans for retention are now imaged, implemented the FHA scorecard to streamline our FHA underwriting process, moved our QC routine to monthly from quarterly in years past, started doing customer surveys, moved some originations to Mortgage Builder, hired 18 originators around the group, overhauled our website, and put three real estate joint ventures in place. Not bad for a slow year in the business. Furthermore, we are proud to say our production drop from 2004 to 2005 was only 20% compared with many of our peers who were over 50%.

The consolidation was a good thing in hindsight from the stand point that we lost four brands (Lake State, Key, Skytrust, & SMG) while retaining the production we had hoped to retain. We evolved our relationship with Key, we are now doing business with them as a Third Party Originator instead of an IOC. The sales force from Skytrust merged into Metro while the sales force from SMG merged into Hometown. We parted ways with Lake State completely for loan quality issues. The rest of the team stayed in tact during a tough year in the business. This consolidation and great operations improvement have set the stage for an exciting year of growth in 2006!

2006 – One Nation / Mainstream / Morgan Home Loans / Concord

We had a great year of growth in 2006 as we had been hoping and preparing for. We started the year with One Nation Funding led by Al Stalter and Tom Beer. Operations for One Nation are in Novi with a sales office in Florida and Michigan. By Spring we were opening in Cincinnati Ohio under the direction of Dave Scully. Dave is an industry veteran with some personal ties to some of the Lender family. Dave was ready to make the move from broker to banker, we were thankful he made the move with Lender. Susan Morgan and her team at Morgan Home Loans from Northern Kentucky joined us this summer. Susan has a tremendous resume and contacts in the industry, she was operating in a system similar to Lender but was ready to move on with more independence. We then moved into Columbus Ohio with the Concord team led by Scott and Jeff Brader. Scott and Craig Olmsted knew each other through industry events and the “Brader Team” were ready to grow and evolve their mortgage banking operation. Fortunately we were a good fit and hit the ground running this Fall as Concord Mortgage Group. We spent the better part of 2005 preparing to expand our foot print and achieved those goals in 2006. We hit all of our operational goals this year and are very proud to say, thanks in big part to the people who joined us this year, the 2006 total closed volume was a little better than the previous years total. New IOC’s and new loan officers for existing IOC’s which were hired in 2006 accounted for almost 25% of our total production this year!

In the fall of 2006 we hit our $5 billion mark in closed loans since inception. As a small token of gratitude the lucky customer who put us over the mark received a nice night out with the Senior Officers of the company. During that event we presented them with a check covering their first five house payments. Personally, it was the highlight of my year in terms of all things going on at Lender Ltd.

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