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About Luminati LendingHeadquartered in the heart of Miami Beach's historic art deco district, Luminati Lending, Inc. is a Correspondent Lender offering both light commercial and residential mortgage financing on a wide variety of property types. Passionately committed to relationship-oriented business practices, Luminati Lending provides profitable mortgage lending services while maintaining the highest standards of ethics, high-touch customer service, and employee education and professionalism. Luminati Lending Core ValuesMany ingredients define success. At Luminati Lending, we have identified six core success factors or values which guide our everyday behavior. Through our commitment to these core values, we will excite, delight and surprise our customers who are, after all, at the heart of our business. Integrity
Excellence
Diplomacy
Organization
Strategic Skills
Interpersonal Skills
How It BeganFritz Sheldon met Cooper Lamb at the height of a real estate boom and in the midst of a refinance cycle. Mr. Sheldon was literally overrun with more loans than he and his staff could handle, or so he thought. Upon learning of the critical mass of Mr. Sheldon's loan volume, Mr. Lamb offered to help organize the flow of his business on a consulting basis. As a direct result of following Mr. Lamb's advice and implementing his suggested efficiency and tracking systems, Mr. Sheldon was able to take his mortgage business to an even higher volume than he had thought possible. As a by-product of the consulting arrangement, Mr. Lamb became a well-educated Loan Originator with an impressive pipeline of business and a substantial customer base of his own. It was four years later, in May of 2005, when Mr. Sheldon and Mr. Lamb began to plan a completely new kind of Mortgage Company that eventually would come to be known as Luminati Lending. An agreement was reached within only a few weeks, and Luminati Lending was established on June 7, 2005. The PlanMuch like a jigsaw puzzle, the business plan of Luminati Lending is built on many essential, interlocking parts, each vital to the formation of the big picture. The plan emphasizes everything from company identity and brand to marketing and quality assurance. Following is a topic-by-topic outline of the contents of the plan:
Identity, Brand, Customer Profile. Business Style, Location, Visibility, AccessibilityLuminati Lending creates business opportunities through the presentation of carefully conceived, high-profile social events. The social component is key, as it reflects our belief that a customer is most likely to give us their business when they are happy and relaxed. This belief is evident in our choice of a Miami Beach office location. Parking is plentiful for both guests and employees. Banking Relationships & Lending CapabilityOur ability to write competitive residential and commercial mortgage loans comes from the strong relationships we cultivate with reputable investors offering an impressive array of products and programs. We are selective and discerning, so our investor list is intentionally brief. As a Correspondent Mortgage Lender, the ability and legal right to close in our own name presents a distinct market advantage. PersonnelSome may find it surprising that mortgage industry experience is not the first consideration when recruiting new talent for Luminati Lending. Other than intelligence and communication skill, the most valued quality in a Luminati employee is honorable character, followed closely by a driving ambition, tempered with a willingness to learn. We rarely advertise for talent. Our existing employees as well as vendors, referral partners and customers refer potential employees to us. We also hire many of the students who attend Luminary Institute. Training & EducationBecause we have a comprehensive, eight-week basic training program, the overwhelming majority of the employees we hire are highly productive. We do not hire en masse, hoping a small percentage will work out. Rather, we carefully identify individuals with potential; then we cooperate with the employee to construct a career path that ultimately leads them to their targeted level of production and a sense of accomplishment. Employees also receive daily tutorial in brief one-on-one meetings every morning. Although infrequent, staff meetings always have an educational component. Our sister company, Luminary Institute, is an in-house mortgage broker school, offering not only the state's required pre-licensing seminar but a complete program of beginner and advanced levels of industry-specific classes. Employees of Luminati Lending may attend classes at Luminary Institute free of charge. All employees of Luminati Lending, including loan processors and members of our support staff, possess or are actively pursuing a mortgage broker's license. Marketing, Business Development, Referral PartnersMarketing is embedded in the daily activities of each Luminati Lending employee. Every activity (e.g., the loan process itself) is recognized as one that could produce referral business if approached properly. Each loan originator has a customized business plan with specific goals and activities devised to stimulate grass roots referrals from certain types of professionals in and around our industry. In addition to direct mail, e-mail campaigns and print advertising, Luminati Lending also produces major social events, often benefiting charitable organizations. Promoting the company in this way creates opportunities for our employees to network with their referral partners in the best light possible. Service & QualityCapturing business is meaningless without a detailed quality assurance plan that is honored from the top down. Luminati Lending's ISO9000-compliant quality assurance plan is reflected in the standard operating procedure of each and every company representative, from the CEO to the receptionist. Cheerful compliance with these procedures is monitored, with deviations swiftly remedied in a positive, constructive manner. Furthermore, we recognize that our quality assurance plan must extend to the vendors we contract for title work, property appraisals, and credit reporting, etc. Our service guarantee is only as good as the service we receive from our vendors, and therefore vendor performance is audited regularly. At Luminati Lending, frequent, reassuring communication and comfortable, on-time closings predictably lead to nearly one hundred percent customer satisfaction. Repeat customers and the additional business those clients refer are testimony to Luminati's successful commitment to both service and quality. Our Community PresenceLuminati Lending is an active Pillar Trustee Member of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce and is known for its charitable and community efforts. Mr. Lamb serves on the Emerging Leaders Counsel and Mr. Sheldon serves on the Business Development Committee. For every loan closed, a donation is made to one of several local non-profit agencies. Throughout Miami and south Florida, Luminati Lending is the lender of choice for upper-end real estate and development professionals. Even among competitors, Luminati Lending is widely respected for ethical and expert lending practices and topnotch employee career management. Most Luminati staff members live in Miami Beach, and all employees share the company goal of giving back to our beautiful and vibrant host city through donation and/or in-kind services. Luminati Lending is a dynamic leader in the south Florida mortgage market and will remain a force to be reckoned with for many years to come. Professional Associations
Community Projects Developed by Luminati LendingCultural Pioneers Endowment:
a public/private non-profit organization dedicated both to the restoration of public art, monuments, and fountains and to the revitalization of lost or rare art forms. Charities / Non-Profit Supported by Luminati Lending
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CEO - Fritz Sheldon began his lending career in an entry-level position with SunTrust Mortgage in Atlanta, Georgia on April 1, 1990. After advancing rapidly into positions of graduating responsibility, including Loan Processor, Office Manager, Loan Originator and Origination Team Leader, Mr. Sheldon relocated to Miami Beach in 2002 with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. A south Florida native, he eventually became Regions Bank's Dade County Loan Production Manager and led a team of originators serving over fifty bank branches; under his leadership, production tripled in six months. In a different capacity as Branch Development Manager for another lender, Mr. Sheldon was successful opening new branch locations from the ground up. In mid-2005, Mr. Sheldon and his partners founded Luminati Lending.
COO - Cooper Lamb has several years of mortgage-specific quality systems experience and nearly twenty years in the overall area of quality assurance. Since 1998, as president of his own environmental legal consulting firm, Ecologic Consulting, Mr. Lamb has expertly guided his major client, Halliburton, through intricate state and national regulatory agency guidelines, ultimately reclaiming over $350 million in lost revenues. Mr. Lamb is certified as an ISO9000 Lead Quality Auditor, and has provided Luminati Lending with an ISO9000-compliant quality system for the origination, processing, underwriting and ultimate sale of mortgage loans to secondary market buyers. Mr. Lamb is respected nationwide for his ability to enhance bottom-line profits by systematically eliminating inefficiencies and minimizing risk. A consummate diplomat, Mr. Lamb is best known for his ease of interaction with every level of professional, from the contract laborer to the chairman of the board.