INVESTING WELL
COVER STORY
Unity In Leadership: Tessar and members of the CIVIC senior leadership team meet at the company’s headquarters in Redondo Beach, California.
The CIVIC Difference
CIVIC FINANCIAL SERVICES HAS FOUND THE KEY TO ENRICHING ITS PEOPLE, PARTNERS, AND COMMUNITIES.
by Katie Bean
B ill Tessar fell in love with lend- ing early in his career. During his freshman year of college, he worked as an originator—and he hasn’t looked back since. “The whole ‘love at first sight’ type of thing that people talk about—I think that applies to me and the business,” he said. “It has always remained amazing to me that I can earn a living by helping people make the most important investment of their life.” He’s spent more than 30 years in the business he loves, now as president of CIVIC Financial Services,
a private lender based in the Los Angeles area that specializes in the financing of non-owner-occupied residential investment properties. At CIVIC, he’s helped fashion the business to transform the lives of both clients and employees. JUST GETTING STARTED Tessar joined CIVIC in 2017, at a time when the lending industry was at a crossroads, he said. The financial collapse of 2008 brought intense government scrutiny to conventional lending.
“The margins of profit were paper-thin. The capital requirements were exceptionally high, and the government being your partner changed the way lending was done,” he said. At that time, business-purpose lending was in the “embryonic stage,” Tessar said. He saw an opportunity to bring his experience from conventional lending and apply it to this new space, where he thought “we might be able to do something kind of cool and special.” Five years later, CIVIC has grown from 40 employees to about 420, with
4 | think realty magazine :: june 2022 :: SPECIAL LENDING EDITION
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