A familiar name reclaimed the top spot in Scotsman Guide’s 2025 Top Originators annual rankings. Shant Banosian of Rate produced just more than $1 billion in loan volume last year, a total that pushed him to No. 1 for Total Dollar Volume in the rankings.
This is the fourth time that Banosian has taken the top spot in the Top Originators rankings, first reaching the high mark in 2018. Banosian, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, but who originate nationally, saw a more than $400 million increase in loan volume over the prior year when he produced $580 million in loan volume.
He closed 1,594 loans, 84% purchase and 16% refinance. Banosian recently was promoted to Rate’s president, but he plans to continue being a working originator. (Victor Ciardelli relinquished the president title for Rate, but remains the CEO.)
Mark Cohen of Cohen Financial Group came in second in the rankings, closing 609 loans for $790.9 million in loan volume. Cohen was last year’s No. 1 and is perennially near the top of the rankings. Jarret Coleman of U.S. Bank in Connecticut was in third place. Coleman closed 610 loans for $618.2 million in loan volume. Fourth place went to Ben Cohen of Rate of Chicago who closed 920 loans for $553.9 million in loan volume. Doug Crouse of BMO Bank based in Kansas ranked fifth, producing $500.2 million in loan volume on 500 loans.
The remaining top 10 include: Ameer Katifi, Trusted Mortgage Capital, $474.9 million; Andrew Marquis, CrossCountry Mortgage, $418.9 million; Andrew Li, U.S. Bank, $417.1 million; Baret Kechian, LoanDepot, $414.6 million; and Rachel Jiang, BMO Bank, $392 million.
This is the 16th year that Scotsman Guide has published the Top Originator rankings. More than 5,500 mortgage originators qualified for the rankings, up 32% from the previous year. Any licensed residential mortgage originator who secured $25 million or more in production or closed 75 loans or more was eligible.
All of the top 10 originators performed better last year than the year prior. The top 5 originators all produced more than a half billion in total loan volume apiece.
Katifi and Li were both new to the top 10 this year. Katifi had not submitted loan volume in 2024 but ranked No. 127 in the 2023 tally when he worked at E Mortgage Capital and produced $160.7 million in loan volume. Li moved up 116 spots in the rankings in 2025. He produced $121.3 million in last year’s rankings working at U.S. Bank.
The originators who submitted and qualified in 2025 produced an aggregate total of $254 billion in loan volume on nearly 645,000 closed loans. That’s a sharp uptick from the prior year when originators tallied $183 billion in loan volume on 482,000 closed loans or an increase of 40% on the dollar totals and 33.5% on loans. This year, 1,794 women originators, or about 32% of the total, qualified for the rankings. Last year, 1,420 women qualified or 33.5%. Of the list, 136 originators also identified as being U.S. military veterans, up from 99 the previous year.
In the 2025 rankings, 86% of the mortgage professionals produced at least one non-qualified (non-QM) mortgage. That’s up from 75% the year prior. Those are the loans often for investors or gig economy workers that do not meet the standards to be sold to the federal government or the government-sponsored enterprises.
The top 250 mortgage originators and their production details for Top Dollar Volume are listed over the next several pages as well as the top non-QM producers. The complete Total Dollar Volume and Most Loans Closed rankings are available now on scotsmanguide.com. ●
