Michael Bahner, Esq.

Michael Bahner serves as Collateral Compliance and Workout Specialist at Phoenix Capital Solutions, responsible for the complete collateral compliance lifecycle on each assigned loan — from UCC-1 financing statement filings and insurance verification at closing through ongoing lien monitoring, covenant tracking, and, when required, default management and borrower workout. His role sits at the intersection of legal rigor and operational execution: he is the day-to-day compliance arm that ensures every assigned loan remains properly documented, collaterally sound, and audit-ready from origination through resolution.

​

Michael brings over two decades of legal and compliance experience, the majority of it built inside financial services organizations where the stakes of getting compliance wrong are measured in regulatory exposure, litigation cost, and institutional credibility. He most recently operated as Owner and Legal Consultant of FairPoint Resolution Services, where he delivered comprehensive legal and compliance advisory services to business owners and executives — counseling senior leadership on litigation strategy, risk management, privacy compliance, contract negotiations, regulatory obligations, and dispute resolution. His ability to translate complex legal risk into practical, actionable guidance for non-legal audiences is a skill that translates directly into how he communicates compliance findings and collateral issues to borrowers and the Phoenix Capital team.

​

The formative chapter of Michael's career was his thirteen-year tenure as Managing Counsel at Resurgent Capital Services, a large financial services company operating in the consumer finance and debt servicing space. In that role he built and directed an internal litigation unit that reduced legal expense liabilities by over five million dollars during his tenure — cutting average case resolution costs by approximately 68% — while simultaneously identifying more than twenty-five systemic risk areas across the organization and delivering remediation advice, technical assistance, and compliance training to each core business unit. He directed the management of legal defense for the company and its affiliates, oversaw complex contract negotiations and drafting across multiple business units including Auto Finance, Bankruptcy Servicing, and Special Loan Servicing, and provided testimony to government agencies on behalf of the business. A career spent managing compliance at that scale — in a regulated consumer finance environment, under constant regulatory scrutiny — is precisely the background that the Collateral Compliance and Workout Specialist role requires.

​

Earlier in his career, Michael served as In-House Counsel at J.K. Harris FRS, where he held the additional designation of Chief Regulatory Compliance Officer, serving as the primary liaison to state and federal regulatory entities and managing staff training across legal, consumer rights, and debt analysis functions. He also conceived and executed value-added workout products that generated nearly one million dollars in first-year revenues — an early demonstration of the transactional creativity and commercial awareness he continues to bring to complex workout situations. Before his in-house career, he operated his own law practice, representing businesses and consumers in state and federal courts and before government agencies in matters spanning creditor-debtor law, insolvency, contracts, and transactional law.

​

Michael holds a Juris Doctor from Widener University School of Law and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Economics from Susquehanna University. His legal background spans litigation strategy, contract drafting and negotiation, bankruptcy analysis, regulatory compliance, and dispute resolution — a range that maps directly onto the legal and operational demands of collateral compliance and workout management in a commercial lending environment.

​

At Phoenix Capital, Michael's depth of experience in financial services compliance, lien management, workout execution, and regulatory engagement makes him the right professional to own the collateral compliance function on each loan in his assigned book. For sellers whose notes depend on the integrity of the underlying collateral, for borrowers whose obligations are monitored and enforced by a professional with genuine legal expertise, and for institutional investors whose capital depends on the enforceability of every lien and covenant in his assigned book, his work provides the compliance foundation that protects the value of each assigned asset from day one.