Private mortgage lender RPM Mortgage announced that for the third straight year, Standard & Poor's placed its US residential mortgage originator ranking at "Above Average" after it reviewed the company’s origination process for prime residential mortgages, including conventional, government agency and jumbo loans.

“S&P’s 2015 rating of RPM underscores our decades-long commitment to credit and employee quality,” said RPM CEO Rob Hirt, in a statement.

“Our credit quality commitment has always been driven by our management and employee quality commitment,” added Hirt.

Here are S&P’s four points why it's so impressed by RPM

1. RPM executives way impressive

RPM’s top executives hold a long mortgage-focused track record dating back to 1986, overseeing mortgage companies with better than average historical loan performance, and measured growth. In 2015, RPM closed $5.8 billion in residential mortgages.

2. RPM can roll with the punches

RPM’s performance has been notably stable facing recent housing market challenges, and its origination exhibited better-than-average performance throughout the most recent housing cycle.

3. The business model is the bee's knees

RPM operates a retail-only origination model, under which all agents conducting client-facing interactions are RPM employees who live and work in the communities they serve. Unlike other large prime and jumbo lenders, RPM does not use brokers or correspondents.

4. Borrowers pay their mortgages

RPM’s historical delinquencies, early payment defaults, and repurchases compared favorably with peers: For 2012-2014 originations in post-crisis prime securitizations, no RPM loans were 90-plus days delinquent, and there were no losses. And RPM’s two-year FHA compare ratio for serious delinquencies was better than the U.S. average in the two years ended October 31, 2015.

Ever since its first evaluation in 2012, RPM remains the only privately owned U.S. residential mortgage originator to consistently receive above average ratings across all eight key areas S&P analyzes, according to a press release on the subject.