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Better people make better lending

We lend billions of dollars to commercial real estate projects every year. But it’s not just capital that distinguishes us. It’s the empowered nature of our workforce. Our advisors are experienced experts whose sole focus is to deliver financing strategies that enable you to achieve greater success.

Our Better Lending culture – three decades in the making – is built on the skill that comes from pure mortgage lending. Because we start from a position of knowledge about you, your project, and your market, we can design solutions that are fit for your purpose. And because accountability is in our nature, we meet our commitments.

Better by design, better by nature, better for you in every corner of the country.

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Paul Steckler

Paul is a member of:
Team Syme - Steckler

Assistant Vice President, Commercial Financing

paul.steckler@firstnational.ca

403.861.0797

Relatable. Disarming. Authentic.

Paul has recently joined the First National team, bringing 20 years of experience in commercial real estate finance and development. He has been both a lender and a developer and offers clients a broad view of the market, having experienced many up and down cycles throughout his career.

For Paul, he aims to be a trusted advisor for every client. He considers himself to be a relationship banker – where interactions are both professional and personal, and enduring friendships develop. Clients that he worked with more than 10 years ago will often call him out the blue to ask his advice about opportunities that they are pursuing. Based on his diverse experience on both sides of the “table,” Paul approaches client service from his own personal trial and error and knowledge of what worked and didn’t.

As he embarks on this new adventure at First National, he is excited to share his broad perspectives with clients. In the earlier days of his lending career, Paul thought he understood all of the angles of development and construction financing. But then he became a developer and realized how much insight and nuance he was unaware of until he actually experienced it himself. The cross section of lending and development knowledge enables him to create better opportunities for clients by exploring the alternatives in a unique way. It is always his intent to figure out how to maximize the win for clients while still respecting and maintaining risk parameters.

Working at First National, Paul is most excited about having more freedom to move. With the flat structure, he knows he is always one step away from an ultimate decision maker. He also finds it encouraging working for an organization that has an impressive number and diversity of business partners with varied appetites for different assets. With such multi-faceted sources of funding to draw from, Paul feels he can be more things to more people.