Oak Street Expands Staff to Fuel Growth

INDIANAPOLIS, IN--(Marketwire - May 15, 2012) - Oak Street Funding (www.oakstreetfunding.com), the nation's leading commission-based lender for insurance agents, is expanding its loan origination, underwriting and loan servicing departments to fuel the company's continued growth. This move helps the company to meet the needs of insurance agents for capital to buy, build or grow their businesses.

Oak Street Funding announced it has hired Barry Kehl as director of underwriting and Maranda Stars as controller. Kehl leaves a position where he successfully handled the performance, management and monitoring of a $700 million commercial loan portfolio. He has prior executive level leadership positions for banking and investment companies, including Indiana Bank and Trust and Fifth Third Bank. Stars was a senior auditor at Ernst & Young, where she performed audits and quarterly reviews for SEC and non-SEC clients in the retail, consumer products and utilities industries.

Following a 36 percent increase in loans to insurance agents in 2011, Oak Street Funding is on pace for 300 percent growth in 2012. As a result, it has also added four new loan officers and two additional customer service representatives to meet pent up demand for capital in the insurance industry.

"Agents were somewhat apprehensive about investing in growth over the last few years," commented Rick Dennen, CEO of Oak Street Funding. "Now that there are some signs of a hardening market and an economic rebound, they are back in the market looking for capital to fund their growth. I believe we're seeing record numbers of loans because of this surge and because we fill a void that banks typically won't fill."

More information on the new hires and career opportunities is available on Oak Street Funding's website at www.oakstreetfunding.com.

About Oak Street Funding
The Carmel, Ind.-based Oak Street Funding (www.oakstreetfunding.com) is a family of diversified financial services companies that offers commission-based commercial financing exclusively for insurance professionals and third-party loan servicing for financial institutions. Oak Street utilizes industry knowledge, proprietary technology and passion to deliver top-quality service and capital products to insurance and finance professionals nationwide.