California-headquartered lender American Pacific Mortgage (APM) has hired back its former CFO Prateek Khokhar. Khokhar will be filling the CFO position, which was previously held by Paul Hubbard for more than three years.
Hubbard – who has been in the mortgage industry for 38 years – officially retired earlier this month, according to a LinkedIn post from Bill Lowman, vice chairman at APM.
“Prateek brings a fresh perspective and great energy to the company, and we are thrilled to have him back as part of our APM Family,” Lowman said.
Prateek was the CFO at APM for nearly three years, a role held until January 2020. He also served as CFO at Civic Financial Services, Supreme Lending and Mission Loans before returning to APM.
APM didn’t provide additional comments on Prateek’s responsibilities.
While the California lender saw production drop about 42% to $13.8 billion in 2022, due in large part to the interest rate environment and the refi business dwindling, Prateek joins the company at a time when APM has been in expansion mode.
In 2022 alone, APM acquired 11 branches from Arizona-based Sunstreet Lending and Sunstreet, 25 branches from the Minnesota retail lender Lend Smart Mortgage and 51 branches from AmeriFirst Financial Inc.
The lender also brought over at least 45 former retail branches from Finance of America Companies Inc. (FoA) months after it shut down its forward mortgage segment.
All in all, 900 employees joined the company from the four deals APM completed last year, including 540 LOs, Lowman said in a previous interview with HousingWire.
Lowman projected a 25% volume increase for APMs production in 2023 — at a time when origination for the industry is expected to decline about 10 to 15% from 2022.
Lowman had previously said that it’s in conversations with “a lot of lenders,” declining to mention further details.
“The more the disruption, the more the opportunity. When it’s too tough for them, it’s just right for us. We went into this declining market prepared to take advantage of it,” Lowman said.
