The busiest senior housing underwriter in the country last year wasn’t a large, multinational financial corporation—instead, it was an investment bank a fraction of that size.

Chicago-based specialty investment bank Ziegler was the top health care/senior living municipal underwriter by number of financings in 2016, with 80 bond issues worth about $4.46 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

The No. 2 and No. 3 health care/senior living underwriters by financings in 2016 were Bank of America Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Securities LLC, with 60 bond issues worth $7.96 billion and 42 bond issues worth $6.9 billion, respectively.

“We are able to compete with some of the largest banks in the world because we’re completely embedded in the industries we serve, which proves invaluable to clients,” Ziegler CEO Tom Paprocki said in a press release.

Ziegler’s total health care/senior living issuances by par amount jumped from $760 million in 2011 to $4.4 billion in 2016, amounting to a 479% increase in six years, according to the bank.

Written by Mary Kate Nelson