Apm Leaders Discuss Succession Planning And 2026 Strategy

Last month, American Pacific Mortgage (APM) announced a leadership transition as the company nears its 30th anniversary. The company’s longtime chairman and former president and CEO, Bill Lowman, said he plans to retire after more than two decades with APM.

As part of the leadership transition, Ned Payant, APM’s former CEO, stepped into the role of chairman of the board while company president Dustin Sheppard got promoted to the CEO role.

In an interview with HousingWire just under a month into their new roles, Payant and Sheppard talked about APM’s strategy going into 2026 as the company looks to lower costs while maintaining its service standards.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sarah Wolak: It’s been almost a month since APM announced leadership transitions and both of your roles were affected. Tell me what that has been like.

Ned Payant: Succession planning is kind of what we do at APM, and although it’s one month into this, the reality is that this is probably five or six years in the making. APM has been around for 29 years, almost 30 years, which means that Dustin is going to be just the fourth CEO of this company. I’ve been here for 16 years. As far as my new role, that is to support Dustin and preserve APM’s legacy.

Bill Lowman was most recently our chairman and he recently retired. But prior to being chairman, he was the CEO, and prior to that role, he was the president, and he started 20-some years ago as a branch manager. That’s the DNA of our organization; we kind of grow people in that regard.

Wolak: What has it been like navigating this transition? Has your role shifted much, or are you stepping into an advisory role to Dustin?

Payant: Honestly, it’s not a whole lot different. [My role] is about supporting Dustin and the leadership team, but I’m very active and very involved in the organization, in the day-to-day organization. Quite honestly, Dustin and I kind of divvy up a lot of the activity that goes on in this company, and that will continue. And we’ll also continue to elevate leadership in this company, and bring in leadership from outside with new ideas and thoughts as well.

Dustin Sheppard: I started at APM when I was 24 and I was the founder’s LOA. My desk was a filing cabinet in Kurt Reisig’s office, and I would sit and listen to him talk to clients and referral partners. And then one day, I asked him how to get into his position. He said, ‘Go get your license.’ And so then fast forward, 24 years later, with amazing friends and mentors, with Kurt and Bill and Ned and the other founders that I’ve had exposure to, I just I have to pinch myself sometimes, because throughout my career, I’ve been very lucky and having mentors and people that have guided me.

I come from a production background, and that’s the one thing about APM: that is our North Star. Our branch managers and loan officers are our customers, and we’re 100% focused on making them look good at all times. And if you keep that as your North Star in a retail banking environment, everything else kind of becomes pretty simple, because make all your decisions through that lens, and you’ll take good care of your people.

Wolak: It’s interesting that Dustin taking on the CEO role was an internal, previously discussed decision and that many of APM’s leaders grew in the ranks rather than being outsourced talent. Does that add an advantage or edge to APM and its legacy?

Sheppard: For me, culture is No. 1. And when you have leaders that have come up through the ranks of this company, all different backgrounds and different walks of life, but they’ve been here, they know we have a really strong culture, and that is a competitive edge for us. And that doesn’t mean that we’re not open to new ideas, because I also think there’s there’s a yin and yang to that, as well. You need to be bringing in new blood and new ideas as well, which we’re very open to.

Payant: We’ve brought in some incredible talent from outside the organization, but oftentimes, in a leadership role like this, you want to maintain good DNA. Dustin talked about the culture and how important the culture is in the organization, and sometimes bringing somebody in from the outside can mess with your culture. The other thing is, we’re an employee-owned company…we have 2,500 families to take care of. So when we talk about leadership, we have to consider that we have 2,500 owners of this company, and we want to make sure that we do right by them.

Our core values are transparency, respect and scrappiness, which mean that we’re being transparent to our employees every day, we treat everybody with respect, and not just our employees, but everybody in the community, and then the last thing, when it comes to scrappy…that just means we’ll do whatever it takes to support our team, and we’ll do whatever it takes to support our loan officers and our branch managers.

Wolak: As we’re nearing the end of 2025, what are the biggest opportunities for APM right now? What are some of the challenges?

Sheppard: We’re going to continue to grow as a company. We want to grow with the right people. We want to grow with people who value what we bring to the table and who value our culture. And so it’s growth, but not growth for growth’s sake. We’re not obsessed with being a certain number or a certain rank…we want to run a solid company where our employees are happy to do good work every day. We’re pushing out high-quality loans, and we’re running a profitable organization. That is the true measure of success.

The other side of it is that margin compression is still going to be there. Also, everybody’s talking about AI. You’ve got to be really tech-forward and looking at how you can reduce your manufacturing costs using technology like AI, which I think truly does unlock the ability to drive down manufacturing costs with technology. That’s a big one. And of course, there’s gonna be twists and turns in the market. Everybody feels like we’ve kind of weathered the storm and we could be headed into brighter days, but you’ve got to be ready to pivot on a dime at all times.

Payant: Looking at 2026, we want to continue the momentum that we feel like we’ve had in 2025. It’s been tough for a few years and really, a tip of the hat to all of our competitors who are still in it and still swinging away because it’s not easy. We’ve had nice growth in 2025 and we’ve really leaned into innovation as well, but also reducing our cost to originate. The cost to originate alone continues to go up, and we’ve done a good job in 2025 of actually lowering our manufacturing costs. And so a big part of our strategic plan in 2026 is to continue to lower manufacturing costs so that we can be competitive next year and for years to come.