The Executive Partners
Bryan Harlan
Chief Executive Officer & Founding Partner
Bryan holds an MBA in Finance from Dallas Baptist University. He has an undergraduate degree of finance and psychology from Texas Christian University’s prestigious and nationally ranked MJ Neeley School of Business. He was awarded a nomination for the elite EIF, Education Investment Fund, the first student managed investment fund in the United States.
His mortgage experience began at Landmark Mortgage in 1997 as a top producing loan officer and promoted to a Production Manager of 1-800-HOMELOAN. Following, he started a branch with The Mortgage Factory and quickly opened satellite branches in Shreveport and Baton Rouge, LA.
Bryan is currently CEO and Founding Partner of Benchmark Mortgage where he has demonstrated success as an entrepreneur, executive, trainer and mortgage consultant. He has also achieved the Certified Mortgage Consultant, CMC, designation awarded by the NAMB.
Bryan has led the way at Benchmark by pioneering accounting and IT platforms. He is a goal-directed change agent and a skillful team builder with a sense of urgency. He thrives on P&L responsibility and driving top-line revenue growth as well as bottom line profitability. He also leads the legal, licensing and compliance affairs of Benchmark in 40 states. In addition, he holds a mortgage loan originator or MLO license in 36 states. His ability to originate and to continually fund a pipeline of loans each month is most amazing given his responsibilities
Stewart Hunter
Core Values Officer & Founding Partner
Stewart Hunter currently serves as Core Values Officer for Dallas-based Benchmark Mortgage, a firm he co-founded in 1999. Originally a loan officer with a vision for a better way to run a mortgage banking operation, Hunter was instrumental in setting down a set of core values that, if followed, would create the nation’s strongest mortgage lending operation, with referral and repeat business from lifetime clients.
Today, he oversees day-to-day operations at the firm, ensuring that every decision the company makes, every new staff member the company hires and every partner the firm interacts with remain aligned with Benchmark’s core values.
Benchmark Mortgage is once again the fastest growing mortgage company in Dallas, with nearly 70 branches and 165 experienced Mortgage Experts working in the firm. The company has successfully navigated the downturn and has returned to the goal of expanding its presence nationwide.
Hunter is active in his community, vocal in his support for the mortgage industry and the professionals working within it and committed to his company, and his family. He lives in Dallas with his wife and twin children.
Jim McMahan
President & Partner
Jim McMahan is the President of Benchmark Mortgage. For the past twenty-five years, he has been one of the outstanding leaders of the mortgage lending industry.
The first five years of his career were spent with California-based Great Western Bank. In 1991, Jim joined CTX Mortgage, where for seventeen years he was an integral part of helping the company grow to become the number one non-bank lender in the United States for several years during his time there. During his career he held the position of Senior Loan Officer, having personally closed over 5,000 transactions worth close to $1.5 billion in loan originations. Jim has also served as Sales Manager, National Sales Trainer and Executive Vice President.
For the past three years, he has been serving Benchmark and its customers, first as Executive Vice President and National Sales Trainer and now as its President. He is very clear on the vision that will carry the company into the second decade of this century, overcoming new obstacles and meeting standards of compliance never before seen by the industry.
At one time, Benchmark supported over two-hundred branches. Jim and the Leadership Team have overseen the transformation of the company which has led to a leaner, more effective organization with fewer than sixty branches, all of which are led by a team of highly experienced relationship-based, seasoned mortgage professionals. Each branch partner on Benchmark’s team today averages eight years or more of experience as a Senior Originator and Manager and many are former company owners themselves. Jim’s efforts over the last three years are already bearing fruit. Benchmark just completed its second record year in a row from a financial standpoint and has seen its best company performance in its eleven years in existence.
Jim has done more than lead successful companies; he has served as a leader for the industry as a whole. On stage for more than eighteen years, he is a dynamic and compelling speaker, who has built his reputation on the ability to help mortgage professionals maintain and grow their businesses, especially in tough markets. He continues to be in high demand, having served as a keynote speaker for hundreds of industry events, more than fifteen of the nation’s state associations and the MBA’s Annual Conference in 2004.
Jim helped developed processes and strategies over the past twenty years that influenced a higher level of professionalism in mortgage origination by helping loan officers learn to not just do a loan but instead, become a mortgage planner by learning to build a debt strategy with and for the customer. He is part of the Mortgage Success Source Contributing Faculty and has built programs that have helped to turn thousands of good loan officers into great loan officers. He is the founder of Certified Scripts for Success™, now a part of LoanToolbox, through which he shares fresh insights with members each week on topics of critical importance to the industry. His program has been effective in helping originators hone their own dynamic and credible market opinion, creating a cadre of industry experts in local markets around the country. Jim was also part of the original advisory board of Mortgage Coach.