Interview | CEO Ben Fertig: “No Voice Is Too Small” — The Leader Behind a Billion-Dollar Lending Business

September 2, 2026.

Successful companies are often explained through their results.

The volume. The rankings. The market share. The technology.

And the results at Constructive Loans are difficult to ignore.

Mortgage Research Network recently ranked Constructive among the top five lenders in the country for investment-property refinances, based on 2025 HMDA data. The company is currently closing roughly 750 to 1,000 loans per month with a team of approximately 200 people.

But numbers rarely explain how a company gets there.

I was particularly interested in the leadership behind those results.

When I previously interviewed Megan Castleton, Constructive’s Chief Credit Officer, she described a culture centered on collaboration, transparency and accountability. One phrase she attributed to Ben Fertig stayed with me:

“No voice is too small.”

So when I sat down with Ben, President and CEO of Constructive Loans, I wanted to understand what that philosophy actually means when you are leading a lending platform operating at this scale.

What followed was a conversation about much more than loan volume.

We talked about the rise of DSCR, capital markets, broker relationships, a $500,000-plus decision during COVID, the difficulty of empowering people, the value of hiring people who know more than you do, and how Constructive is turning years of internal decision-making into artificial intelligence.

Most importantly, we talked about the mindset behind the business.

Starting With the Results

Uriel Fleicher: Ben, I want to start with something very current. Mortgage Research Network recently ranked Constructive among the top five lenders in the country for investment-property refinances, based on 2025 HMDA data. Rankings capture a result, but they rarely explain what had to happen behind the scenes to produce it. How did you get there?

Ben Fertig: It’s a culmination of a lot of inputs over time. One important component has been our secondary marketing program. We diversified our capital sources extremely early, and that became particularly valuable during periods when market conditions were difficult.

When rates increased and markets became turbulent, we had forward commitments that enabled us to maintain price stability while others experienced much more pricing volatility that ultimately got passed through to their clients. We did very well through those periods and picked up market share. Our secondary marketing program, especially around DSCR—which represents a lot of the production reflected in those rankings—has remained extremely proficient.

But it’s not just a price-and-process play. We’ve invested heavily in our relationships with brokers and third-party originators. We do things designed to enable them to be successful beyond just giving them good pricing and a good product. We obsess over the client experience. At the end of the day, if we can’t make our clients successful, we’re not going to be successful. You have to execute on their behalf consistently. I think we’ve executed our way to our market share.

Constructive Wasn’t Supposed to Become a DSCR Story

Uriel Fleicher: Successful companies often look obvious in retrospect. Once the platform is built and the volume is there, it can seem as though the path was always clear. Take us through the different stages of Constructive. How did the original vision evolve as the company grew?

Ben Fertig: I’ve been an executive in residential investor lending—or private lending, whatever you want to call it—since 2012. My background initially was in RTL. When I started Constructive in the fourth quarter of 2017, I expected us to focus heavily on RTL. But as we looked at the secondary and capital markets, DSCR loans were starting to gain traction. At the time, there wasn’t a tremendous amount of single-asset DSCR origination.

We didn’t specifically say, “We’re going to become a DSCR lender.” We just became good at it. That vertical started growing much faster than the RTL side of our business. It wasn’t really by design or strategy. At that stage of development, you take the opportunities that are in front of you. I’ve always been hyper-focused on execution regardless of what we’re doing.

The market kept giving us feedback that we were providing a good DSCR experience. So we let it run. Over time, it became a preference because there are advantages in the economics, cash management and other parts of the business. But there was never some master plan where I said, “I’m going to build one of the largest DSCR lenders.”

Uriel Fleicher: Constructive eventually attracted institutional investment and ultimately became part of a publicly traded company. Were you building the business with an eventual acquisition in mind?

Ben Fertig: No. Not once did I run this company in a direction designed for it to be acquired. My goal wasn’t M&A. My goal was to run the best business possible. I manage the things inside my control profitably, and I never really made decisions based on trying to create an external event. Today we’re owned by a publicly traded mortgage REIT. They understand these assets extremely well, and they’re great partners.

Naturally, they have an interest in the assets we originate, but they’ve also remained committed to Constructive maintaining a diversified secondary marketing program and relationships with multiple high-quality counterparties. That’s important to the business.

The People Create the Upside

Uriel Fleicher: As the leader of a company with approximately 200 people, how do you think about your own impact on the business? How much of Constructive’s success depends on you, and how much depends on the people around you?

Ben Fertig: It’s the people that have to make the business great. I can’t do it on my own. Think about it. I am accountable and may ultimately have to make the decision, but then the people still have to execute it. So if the company is going to be great, it’s because of them.

My belief system is that I cannot be successful unless the people underneath me are successful. And that’s not because I’m an altruist. It’s because that’s how I believe outcomes are realized. I’m very hands-on and do know the business. I’m engaged in sales, credit, operations, efficiency, profitability, marketing, finance—virtually every facet of our operation. That’s my style.

But even if you’re involved day to day, you still have to empower people. That isn’t always easy, and it took me time during my career to develop that.

“No Voice Is Too Small”

Uriel Fleicher: When I interviewed Megan Castleton, she told me that Ben often says inside Constructive: “No voice is too small.” I wanted to understand how that principle works in practice. As a company becomes larger, it becomes increasingly difficult for a CEO to know what employees closest to the borrower or broker are actually seeing. How do you make sure those voices reach you?

Ben Fertig: The voices closest to the real points of communication—our clients and other stakeholders—can actually be the most important voices. That’s where everything is happening. My executive meetings might be among the least important communications inside the company from that perspective. I want feedback.

But getting honest feedback isn’t easy. People generally aren’t going to walk into my office and just start telling me everything that’s on their mind. So we create mechanisms for it. We have something called Breakfast with Ben. Usually it’s six or seven employees and no leaders. We sit down and have a candid conversation. There might be an agenda, but what I really want is their perspective.

If someone is sitting one-on-one with me, they may be uncomfortable. When there are six or seven people together, we tend to get very good feedback. We also hold company-wide meetings where employees can submit questions anonymously. When we started doing that, our HR leadership thought I was out of my mind. Think about 2022, when mortgage companies were having serious problems. People could ask anonymously: Are we going to have layoffs? Are we going to go out of business? And we answered the questions.

Transparency matters. People have choices about where they want to work. If you appreciate your employees, your clients and the people giving you opportunities, you’re probably going to get better outcomes. If you take them for granted, eventually it shows up in the results.

Hiring the Right People

Uriel Fleicher: A leader also has to surround himself with people who may know considerably more than he does in particular areas. How comfortable are you with that?

Ben Fertig: Today? Very comfortable. But I wasn’t always. When I was a younger executive, I liked doing everything. There are a lot of people who know much more than I do about a lot of things. Those people are valuable to the company, and to me. They’re not a threat, in fact, that’s what you want. If this company is only as good as my knowledge, we’re limiting ourselves.

Look at something as simple as technology. How could one person possibly know everything? And that applies to every aspect of the business.  Ultimately, you’re trying to find the right people. Sometimes the best people and the right people are the same. Sometimes they aren’t. If I had a choice between the best people and the right people, I would take the right ones.

When Leadership Gets Tested

Uriel Fleicher: Principles are relatively easy to defend when markets are functioning. March 2020 was different. Capital markets froze almost overnight. Loans stopped funding. Nobody knew how long the disruption would last. Constructive was also running a broker contest based on closed loans. Was there a moment in your career that felt like a failure or crisis at the time, but looking back became an important step in getting you where you are today?

Ben Fertig: COVID is a good example. When capital markets froze in March 2020, we really didn’t know what was going to happen. We stopped funding a lot of loans. At the same time, we were running a broker contest based on closed loans. But the brokers couldn’t close because we weren’t funding. So we decided to pay the contest based on applications for loans that ultimately never funded. We paid the brokers anyway.

There were also situations where people in our ecosystem were losing money as a result of what was happening. Borrowers or brokers might lose earnest money, for example. In some instances, we paid that back—sometimes amounts up to $20,000. Between paying the contest and addressing situations where we believed people had been adversely impacted, we spent somewhere between $500,000 and $600,000. And at the time, we had no idea what was going to happen.

Then the market started coming back later in 2020, and in 2021 it caught fire. Everybody remembered what we had done. What looked like an enormous expense during an uncertain period became an investment. It paid dividends in 2021 and beyond. But we didn’t know that when we made the decision.

Sometimes you just have to do the right things for the right reasons and follow your instincts.

Uriel Fleicher: Is that also how you think about the relationship with brokers?

Ben Fertig: Absolutely. If you’re just saying “relationship, relationship, relationship,” then it’s a talking point. If you only care about the short term, maybe relationships don’t matter as much. You can make enough money and move on. But if you’re going to be successful over the long term, trust matters.

That applies to brokers, borrowers, warehouse lenders and capital partners. With our brokers, we try to work holistically. We may enter into marketing partnerships, invest with them in search-engine marketing, support them at conferences or help around lead-generation initiatives. But ultimately, none of that matters unless you execute. You have to execute on their behalf.

Using AI Where Relationships Get Difficult

Uriel Fleicher: Technology can make lending more efficient, but private lending is still an extraordinarily relationship-driven business. Where do you believe AI actually fits?

Ben Fertig: One of the things we’ve identified is that maybe 15% to 25% of loans need escalatory attention. But those loans can represent 85% to 90% of the relationship-management effort. Those are the difficult loans. An exception needs to be made. There’s an unusual scenario. Somebody has to make a decision related to risk or pricing. That’s where a lot of the relationship is won or lost. So that’s one of the areas where we’re putting our most sophisticated technology.

We have an AI agent in development that has been prompted using transcripts from what we call our escalation calls. Those calls happen several times per week and can last for hours. I’m on the call. Our COO is on it. Our Chief Credit Officer is on it. If an exception was made, if there was a unique scenario, or if a business decision was made around risk or price, that knowledge exists in those conversations. We’ve been recording and maintaining those transcripts for years.

Now we can use that institutional knowledge to train an AI agent. Nobody else has our transcripts. Nobody else has years of our decisions. So when we think about artificial intelligence, the question is: How do we use technology to double down on what we’re already good at?

Uriel Fleicher: So the advantage isn’t simply having AI. It’s having the knowledge to teach it.

Ben Fertig: Exactly. You have to know your business before you can apply AI to it. You can’t just be “AI.” Technology and digital development are going to be a major part of where this industry goes. But you need to understand sales, credit, operations, relationships, efficiency and where the real friction exists. Then you apply the technology. Technology should support the relationships.

Reading the DSCR Market

Uriel Fleicher: Let’s move to the market itself. You’ve watched DSCR evolve from a relatively small part of residential investor lending into one of its defining products. Where is the DSCR market today?

Ben Fertig: If you go back to around COVID and simplify residential investor lending into two asset classes—RTL and DSCR—roughly three-quarters of the market was RTL. Today it’s much closer to 50-50, and depending on the segment, DSCR may represent even more.

There’s also significant demand for DSCR and non-QM assets in the capital markets. Credit spreads have been healthy, and market participants have been aggressive in bidding for these loans.

There have also been regulatory changes involving insurance companies in the U.S. and Europe that have made it easier for them to access these asset classes. So there’s more capital competing for the assets.

Liquidity is healthy, but it’s a double-edged sword. It makes the market easier to navigate, but it also allows more lenders to compete. That’s why efficiency matters. Price isn’t everything, but it’s unrealistic to suggest that it isn’t important.

What Comes Next

Uriel Fleicher: Constructive is already closing roughly 750 to 1,000 loans per month. Where do you see the next stage of growth coming from?

Ben Fertig: We may broaden our third-party model into some correspondent distribution. But we’re also doubling and tripling down on our broker model. There’s a lot we’re developing around technology and digital support that we believe can enable our clients to grow.

We’re also expanding into additional products that we believe can be groundbreaking. So you’re looking at a combination of product diversification, some distribution diversification, and a very targeted digital and AI strategy. We’re extremely excited about it. We think we can triple the size of the business.

The Leader Behind the Business

Uriel Fleicher: The rankings tell one version of Constructive’s story. But they don’t show the difficult decisions, the relationships protected when there was no certainty of a return, the employees encouraged to challenge leadership, or the evolution required from the person sitting at the top. So I wanted to finish with leadership itself. There are CEOs and leaders in our industry going through periods of uncertainty—facing difficult decisions, leadership challenges, or simply questioning whether they’re on the right path. Having gone through your own journey, what would you tell them?

Ben Fertig: If you don’t want to learn all the time, leadership isn’t your thing. I’ve been in mortgage banking leadership for 30 years. You’re still learning. If you don’t want to learn, you’re never going to enjoy leadership and you’re never going to be good at it.

The second you think you know everything, you’re toast. There are going to be difficult periods. You have to look at those moments and ask what you can learn and where the opportunity is. I also don’t like looking at situations and simply saying they’re outside of my control. Once you start believing everything is outside your control, that’s where you can run into problems as a leader. If everything is outside your control, why should somebody allow you to lead them?

You can’t control everything that happens. But you can control how prepared you are. You can control how you respond. You can control what you learn. And you can control what you do next.

Uriel Fleicher: Ben, thank you for the conversation and for being so open in sharing not only Constructive’s success, but also the decisions, challenges, and leadership philosophy behind it.I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next for Constructive.

Ben Fertig: Thank you, Uriel. I appreciate it.