When Alex Shekhtman launched LBC Mortgage in Los Angeles seventeen years ago, he carried with him the weight of his own experience as an immigrant who had navigated the often-impenetrable barriers of the U.S. financial system, a perspective that would shape his company’s mission to serve borrowers whom traditional banks routinely dismiss.
LBC Mortgage has now earned a 2025 Global Recognition Award for expanding homeownership access for underserved populations while building a training infrastructure that has prepared hundreds of mortgage professionals for careers in the industry. The Los Angeles-based brokerage operates across ten states and facilitates hundreds of millions of dollars in residential financing for self-employed individuals, freelancers, business owners, and immigrants who struggle to meet conventional underwriting standards.
The recognition comes after Shekhtman received consecutive National Association of Mortgage Brokers Broker of the Year awards in 2024 and 2025, distinguishing him as a two-time recipient of the industry’s most prominent peer recognition. The Global Recognition Awards program employs the Rasch measurement model, a statistical framework developed by Danish mathematician Georg Rasch that converts ordinal rating data into standardized measurements, enabling objective assessment across different evaluators.
Alternative Pathways To Homeownership
LBC Mortgage has built its practice around borrowers whose financial profiles don’t conform to standard bank formulas. The company’s employee home-buying program uses alternative documentation methods to verify income for applicants with non-traditional earnings patterns, helping them avoid years of rental instability while struggling to assemble the paperwork conventional lenders require.
Photo Courtesy of Alex Shekhtman
Rather than relying on a single lending source, Shekhtman maintains relationships with dozens of national lending partners, allowing his team to match individual client circumstances with appropriate financing structures. This approach has proven particularly effective for populations that traditional financial institutions have historically marginalized: immigrants without extensive U.S. credit histories, business owners whose tax returns don’t reflect their actual cash flow, and freelancers whose income streams fluctuate from month to month.
The company processes loans across FHA, VA, conventional, and jumbo categories, with particular emphasis on complex scenarios that require specialized knowledge of qualification pathways that remain unfamiliar to many borrowers and industry professionals. “At LBC Mortgage, you’re more than a number. You’re a person with a story, and that matters to us,” Shekhtman said.
Training Infrastructure For Industry Professionals
LBC Academy serves as the company’s formal training program, offering education modules for loan officers and processors that emphasize real-world scenario preparation rather than theoretical knowledge alone. The curriculum covers mortgage lending fundamentals, platform proficiency, complex lending scenarios, business development strategies, and compliance standards, preparing participants for the full range of challenges they will encounter in professional practice.
The academy has trained hundreds of mortgage professionals, and many have gone on to build their own successful practices or lead teams across the industry. Shekhtman’s mentoring extends beyond the formal training structure through his presence in mortgage industry communities, where he shares market insights and business principles across media platforms and podcasts.
The company’s mentoring approach places particular emphasis on serving first-generation professionals and individuals from underrepresented communities who often lack the networks and insider knowledge that facilitate career advancement in financial services. Participants consistently note the accessibility of leadership and the practical application of learned skills that translate directly into client service capabilities.
Expanding Operations While Maintaining Focus
LBC Mortgage now operates across California, Florida, Illinois, Washington, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Oregon, maintaining the client-focused approach that Shekhtman established when he founded the company in 2008. The brokerage’s growth has been accompanied by sustained attention to populations that conventional lenders systematically overlook.
Alex Sterling, spokesperson for Global Recognition Awards, acknowledged the company’s dual focus on service delivery and workforce development. “LBC Mortgage has demonstrated that business success and community service are not competing priorities but complementary forces that drive sustainable industry advancement,” he said.
For Shekhtman, the work remains rooted in the understanding that mortgage access represents more than financial transactions. It shapes the trajectory of families who have been told repeatedly that homeownership lies beyond their reach, a barrier he witnessed firsthand and has spent nearly two decades working to dismantle.
