KANSAS CITY, MO-Love Funding, based here, has hired two FHA lending experts to help it launch a new hospital finance division that will specialize in acute care facilities. The company hired Steven Hunt as first vice president and Matthew Andrea as senior underwriter.

Hunt was most recently a senior account executive at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Healthcare Programs. Andrea was formerly a director of portfolio management in the FHA Section 242 hospital mortgage insurance program.

The 242 program provides insurance to loans for acute care facilities, an asset type that Love wants to move into. The company already concentrates on multifamily and seniors housing loan programs. Love officials say an aging US population and increasing life expectancy are contributing to a growing demand for acute-care hospitals and other health-care facilities nationwide.

Hunt tells GlobeSt.com that because of regular hospital finance sources have still not rebounded from the credit crisis, more hospitals turned to FHA insurance to fund expansion plans in the past five years than in any previous five-year period in the 242 program’s 43-year history. “It has become a more popular form of financing because traditional bond insurers have lost credit ratings,” Hunt says. “With the 242 program, you have the US government backing debt.”

Mark Dellonte, president of Love, said that the 242 program is a natural fit to the company’s core business. “Steve and Matt will allow us to provide our clients with a hospital finance team that has more experience in getting hospital loans through HUD than any other lender in the country. Any hospital looking to tap HUD’s 242 loan program could not be in better or more capable hands,” Dellonte said in a statement.

Hunt says he’s enthused to make the transition to the private sector. “It moves a lot faster on the private side, there’s a ton of deals we’re looking at and I’ve only been there a week,” he says.