Big Lenders Return to Reverse Mortgage Show

We were pleasantly surprised to see some of the mortgage industry’s largest lenders and big banks return to the recent National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association’s Annual Meeting and Expo in Nashville. Most of these big banks had left the industry back in 2011 and 2012 and stayed out in favor of high forward mortgage loan origination volumes during COVID. Now, they’re considering a return back to reverse.

Around 400 industry executives showed up for the event, including traditional reverse mortgage lenders, new lenders and, as we mentioned, some of the nation’s largest depositories.

We were on hand, with a number of our executives, because the reverse lending business is important to us. We’re the only technology provider with end-to-end origination solutions that can originate both forward and reverse loans on the same platform, so it was an important conference for us.

After visiting with executives from these larger institutions, we found that the reason they were back at the show was pretty much the same reason everyone was there: they were searching for loan volume by adding new products to their offerings i.e. reverse mortgages

Because of demographics and a number of macro-economic reasons, reverse mortgage lending will be offering loan volume to lenders who have the people and technology to win it.

Why reverse mortgage lending is more attractive than ever

Proponents of reverse mortgages will tell you that it’s the best way to serve our aging homeowners, people who want to age in place, have the equity in their homes to allow it, without incurring additional monthly cash flow expenditures.

They’ll also tell you that when you serve the parents and can also offer mortgages to their children, you’re more likely to win that business and grow. It’s a matter of family dynamics that we’re seeing more often now that a larger segment of our population are flooding into retirement age.

But the biggest reason we heard from lenders in attendance at this year’s NRMLA annual meeting was that they want to diversify their product offerings in hopes of attracting more volume.

With the Fed signaling that rates are likely to stay high for longer, the hope of a refi boom providing this volume is getting harder to buy into every day.

Why Mortgage Cadence is more attractive than ever

One of the first questions a lender asks when they start looking into offering reverse mortgages is what is the capital outlay required to retool their shops to add this line of business.

There are two things wrong with this. First, many don’t consider this  a new line of business anymore. More and more, lenders consider reverse mortgages as another product that any lender can offer. An interesting wrinkle is that reverse mortgage lenders are asking us about adding forward lending products to their menus. Yes, you heard that right…reverse lenders want to get into forward mortgage origination too and with Mortgage Cadence, they can.

The second point we would make is that users of the next-generation Mortgage Cadence MCP don’t need any new technology to originate reverse mortgage loans. MCP can do it all, from home equity to conventional loans to Jumbo and reverse mortgages. Additionally, MCP can do it via all lending channels ie retail, wholesale, correspondent, etc.

We spent a fair amount of time at the NRMLA show demonstrating how that was possible with our new platform and came away with some budding relationships that we expect to in the new year.

And we expect to see more of that. To find out why you may want to take a closer look at reverse mortgages and how Mortgage Cadence can make that easy for any lender, reach out to us today.

By George Morales, Reverse Mortgage Product Manager at Mortgage Cadence 

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Mortgage Cadence: 
Alison Flaig 
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