Lendmark Financial Services

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Lendmark Financial Services
502 Westfield Pl,
Jasper, TN
PH: (423) 942-7150 FX: (423) 942-7147

Our company was organized in 1996 in the basement of Liberty Mortgage Corporation in Atlanta. We became part of the BB&T family when our parent company, First Liberty Bank, merged during the summer of 2000 with Branch Banking and Trust Company in Winston-Salem.

Our company’s original mission was to meet the personal and mortgage lending needs of clients in the state of Georgia who could not be served by traditional bank products. The company’s founders are among the current executive staff at Lendmark, Bobby Aiken – President and CEO and Joe H. Burgamy – Senior Vice President of Branch Operations.

Almost from the beginning, it was clear that we had developed a plan that would prove to be a winner. We opened four branches in October 1996 in Conyers, Covington, Dalton, and Blue Ridge. A short eleven months later, we opened three more branches in Macon, Milledgeville, and Savannah, followed by our eighth branch in Waycross in June 1998. With the existing operation doing well and exceeding our goals and objectives, we took on the task of completing our first acquisition. In August of 1998, Lendmark acquired First Credit Corporation, expanding our branch presence to the Kingsland, Brunswick, and Augusta markets. Upon the completion of this successful acquisition, we began searching for additional opportunities. In March 1999, we completed our second acquisition of Center Finance. This acquisition was unique in that it allowed us to expand beyond the borders of Georgia into Jasper and East Ridge, Tennessee.

By this time our mortgage division had grown to four account executives marketing wholesale business throughout Georgia. The mortgage division continued to fund business that was seeded into the branches for servicing. The existing branch network and mortgage divisions were flourishing so additional expansion into two new Georgia markets soon followed. In December 1999, the Columbus branch was opened, and we established the Warner Robins branch in April 2000. The next opportunity to expand involved an internal merger of Premier Acceptance Corporation, a non-conforming mortgage lender in Atlanta. We completed this merger in July 2000 and expanded our mortgage operation to ten account executives and a secondary marketing division. For increasing mortgage lending in the state of Florida, we opened an additional branch in Orlando in August 2000.

The year 2000 continued to provide growth opportunities with the acquisition of United Family Finance. Again, we were able to expand beyond our borders with the opening of branches in Murphy and Franklin, North Carolina, as well as an additional branch in Hiawassee, Georgia. As 2000 ended with strong performance, we kept up the pace in January 2001 with the acquisition of Friendly Finance in Athens, Tennessee.

With a proven track record of successfully handling mergers and acquisitions, Lendmark was presented with its largest merger yet, Freedom Financial, a sister company in Virginia. Freedom’s business focus was providing a financing source to referred customers from BB&T who did not qualify under bank terms. We completed this merger in June 2001. We continued our pace with branch openings in Hiram, Georgia and Goldsboro, North Carolina in July and November, respectively. By the end of 2001, Lendmark had established two more branches in Douglasville and Villa Rica, Georgia with the acquisition of CFB Financial. At the beginning of 2001, we relocated the Hiawassee branch to East Ellijay, Georgia, and expanded our branch network in North Carolina to nine locations with the opening of six branches – Elizabeth City, Fayetteville, Greenville, Raleigh, Rocky Mount, and Winston-Salem. The opening of these branches was precipitated by the transfer of loans from Regional Acceptance Corporation, a sister company and subsidiary of BB&T.

In September 2002, Lendmark grew to 50 branch locations with the integration of Rose Shanis, a consumer finance company with a 70-year history of serving customers in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware. Lendmark and Rose Shanis, both subsidiaries of BB&T, share a commitment to customer service. The combined company is a dynamic lender providing personal loans and first and second mortgage loans to customers throughout the east coast from Florida to Delaware.

During July and August 2003 respectively, Lendmark grew to 55 branch locations with the acquisition of the Fredericksburg, Petersburg and Suffolk branches of Family Finance and Colonial Loans. In addition, we opened two new locations in Brandon, Florida and Wilmington, North Carolina. In 2004, we opened offices in Valdosta, Georgia and Catonsville, Maryland. In July we opened our first office in the Palmetto State with a loan production office in Columbia, South Carolina. In late 2004, Lendmark announced that it would move into the Bluegrass State with the acquisition 21 branches from U.S. Bank’s consumer finance affiliate, known as U.S. Bancorp Consumer Finance of Kentucky, Inc. The U.S. Bancorp acquisition provided Lendmark with an immediate foothold throughout the state of Kentucky with branch locations in Russellville, Hopkinsville, Madisonville, Mayfield, Central City, Owensboro, Paducah, Princeton, Ashland, Danville, Prestonsburg, Maysville, Louisville, Paintsville, Corbin, Garrard, Leitchfield, Russell Springs, Somerset, Whitley City and Monticello. In 2005, we opened an additional six branch locations in South Carolina with loan production offices in Aiken, Florence, Greenville, Columbia, Spartanburg, Anderson. We also opened the Pensacola, Florida branch in September.

In 2006, Lendmark expanded with branch openings in Thomasville, Rome, Albany and Newnan, Georgia, Pikeville and Lexington, Kentucky, Manassas and Charlottesville, Virginia, Kissimmee, Florida and California, Maryland. Lendmark opened the first of three branch locations in the Mountain State of West Virginia in 2007, with branch openings in Morgantown, Clarksburg and Martinsburg. We also opened offices in Alcoa, Morristown, and Clarksville, Tennessee and grew our branch count to eight in South Carolina with branch openings in Lexington, and North Charleston, South Carolina. In September, relocated our home office, which housed 150 employees from Conyers, Georgia to Covington, Georgia.

With over 100 branches, covering ten states in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, Lendmark continues to expand as the financial services organization of choice for our customers and retail business partners by providing superior, consistent, and reliable service with every transaction.

The success of our company is specifically attributable to the quality of our personnel and their commitment to our customers. We value each customer and understand that people want to do business with people who care. That’s one way we differ from our competitors. We are proud of what we as a team have accomplished. We will always strive for improvement. Our motto since day one has been, “Success is the only option.” This applies to our business approach and to our commitment to quality customer service. At Lendmark, we recognize that you are unique so we strive to make loans that are as individual as the people who apply for them. That’s the mark of lending excellence.

©2008 Lendmark Finanacial - All Rights Reserved.