NPLA Leadership Summit Brings Private Lending's Decision-Makers into One Room

Invitation-only Park City gathering built around candid peer conversation on capital, risk, technology, policy, and leadership.

PARK CITY, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The National Private Lenders Association (NPLA) convened senior executives from across private and nonbank real estate lending in Park City, Utah, for the 2026 NPLA Leadership Summit.

NPLA designed the Summit around a small room. Attendance is by invitation so that the people setting direction at their firms can talk to each other directly instead of through a panel format. The result was three days of specific conversation: what capital is available and what it costs, what is holding up in the loan book, what executives are actually worried about heading into next year, and what they plan to do about it.

NPLA built the agenda around a single question: what will determine which firms scale through the next cycle?

Capital was the first answer. Matt Nichols, Partner in Asset-Backed Finance and Global Head of Residential Credit at Apollo, walked the room through the continued growth of private credit and Non-QM: where capital is moving, how liquidity and funding structures are being rebuilt, and what institutional partners now expect from a lender before they commit. In a room where nearly every firm is competing for the same institutional dollars, it was the session attendees kept returning to.

Policy was the second. Steven M. Fulop, President and CEO of the Partnership for New York City and former three-term Mayor of Jersey City, brought the part of the business no lender can underwrite. His session covered housing policy, economic development, and the political and regulatory conditions sitting underneath every market a lender operates in, from a vantage point private lending audiences rarely get.

Judgment was the third. Deven Sharma, Chair of the Board at Roc360 and former President of Standard & Poor's, led a conversation on holding credibility through uncertain markets and the link between governance, accountability, and institutional trust. General David W. Allvin, USAF (Ret.), former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, drew on a 39-year career and the leadership of nearly 700,000 Airmen and civilians to talk about decision-making under pressure and moving a large organization through change it did not choose.

Around those anchors, the agenda pushed into the operating questions executives are working through right now. Tela G. Mathias, CTO and Co-Founder of PhoenixTeam, addressed where generative AI is producing measurable value in lending operations and where it is not, drawing on more than 25 years in mortgage technology. Bryce Endline, Managing Director at Piper Sandler, covered M&A and capital raising activity across business-purpose lending and how to evaluate an opportunity in a consolidating market. Dr. Jeffrey B. Graham, Founder and CEO of Atlas Precision Care and Chief Medical Officer of Wild Health, took the leadership thread where it usually gets ignored: the performance and longevity of the people making these decisions.

What made the weekend work was the combination. Capital, risk, technology, policy, and leadership are normally discussed in separate rooms by separate people. At the Summit they were discussed in sequence, by the same group, in the same room, which is closer to how they are actually experienced by anyone running a lending business.

Attendees left with fewer assumptions, a clearer read on where capital is going, and a set of peer relationships they can pick up the phone and use. That is what NPLA builds the Leadership Summit to produce.

About the National Private Lenders Association

The National Private Lenders Association is a professional association serving the private and nonbank real estate lending ecosystem. NPLA supports the industry standards, education, community, and risk mitigation initiatives that strengthen execution and protect market participants.