Sunnyvale Loan Officer Among Top Women

Mortgage rankings can sound like inside-baseball industry stuff. But this one says something real about where housing finance is working right now — and who is still finding volume in a tough market. The news is that Liping Yi, a Citibank home lending officer based in Sunnyvale, made the top 10 on Scotsman Guide’s 2026 Top Women Originators list. That ranking is based on 2025 production, and Yi came in at No. 10 after closing $234.6 million across 157 loans. (scotsmanguide.com) ### What is this list, exactly? Scotsman Guide runs one of the mortgage industry’s best-known annual ranking systems. The 2026 women’s list recognizes originators who, in 2025, either produced more than $25 million in loan volume or closed at least 75 loans. More than 2,000 women qualified this year, up 12% from 1,794 a year earlier. (scotsmanguide.com) ### Where did Yi land? Yi finished No. 10 nationally. Her 2025 total was $234.6 million on 157 closings. That put a Sunnyvale-based lender into the same top tier as much larger-name producers from Pasadena, Texas, Florida, Washington, and Baltimore. In plain English — she was not just “recognized.” She was right at the top of the national stack. (scotsmanguide.com) ### Who was ahead of her? The top spot went to Sherry Wang of Citibank in Pasadena, who closed 302 loans totaling $368.3 million. Risha Kilaru of OriginPoint was second at $363.6 million, and Kelly Malatesta of Cadence Bank was third at $319 million. Yi rounded out a Citibank-heavy top 10 that also included Vicky Wang and Bella Jiao. (scotsmanguide.com) ### Why does Citibank matter so much here? Because this was not a one-off win. Citibank had four women in the top 10 and 13 in the top 150. That is a real pattern, not a lucky outlier. It suggests Citi has built a mortgage platform that still produces elite individual performers even when the broader market stays tight and rate-sensitive. (scotsmanguide.com) ### What does this say about the market? The interesting wrinkle is the business mix. Across the top 150 women originators, the average book was 73% purchases, 23% refinances, and 4% second mortgages. But several of Citi’s highest finishers were much more refinance-he(scotsmanguide.com)come by in the higher-rate era. (scotsmanguide.com) ### So was 2025 actually stronger? At least for this slice of the business, yes. The top 10 women originators combined for $2.8 billion and 3,351 closed loans in 2025, up from $2.5 billion in volume the year before. More women also cleared the qualifying bar. Basically, the best producers did not just survive — they got bigger. (scotsmanguide.com) ### Why does Sunnyvale make sense here? Sunnyvale sits in one of the country’s most expensive and competitive housing corridors. A lender who can generate more than $234 million there is operating in a market where loan sizes are large, borrower profiles are complex, (scotsmanguide.com)fficer can end up on a national leaderboard. This last point is an inference from the region’s role in high-cost mortgage lending, paired with Yi’s production scale. (scotsmanguide.com) ### Bottom line? The headline is simple: Liping Yi of Citibank in Sunnyvale finished No. 10 nationally among women mortgage originators in the 2026 Scotsman Guide rankings. The bigger takeaway is that even in a choppy mortgage market, elite producers — especially at Citi — are still putting up very large numbers, and Sunnyvale is very much part of that story. (scotsmanguide.com)