Jan-Feb2020

Talking Heads EVERY SUCCESSFUL LENDER has a sales manager (or team of sales managers) who educates, motivates and supports a team of loan originators. Vanessa White was a young operations manager in New Jersey overseeing three Bank of New York branches when she heard about a new Federal Housing Administration (FHA) pilot program, called the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage, that had been created to help senior homeowners. White’s mother thought the HECM might benefit a close family friend who owned her home free and clear but was living on less than $1,000 a month. White agreed to help her mother’s friend obtain one. That experience would shapeWhite’s professional career for the next 30 years and turn her into one of the reverse mortgage industry’s top sales managers and originators. Reverse Mortgage magazine sat down with White to talk about those early experiences and the guiding principles that she follows to this day as a sales manager and originator. Reverse Mortgage: Take us back to 1989. How did your involvement with reverse mortgages begin at Bank of New York Mortgage? Vanessa White: BNY had a sister company in California that was chosen by FHA to participate in the reverse mort- gage pilot program. The pilot started on the West Coast and expanded eastward. BNY viewed reverse mortgages as a new opportunity to meet Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) obligations and to help communities. I had a personal interest because I had a close family friend who needed a reverse mortgage. BNY wasn’t doing them yet. Very few lenders offered reverse mortgages. In New Jersey, there were maybe two or three companies. I lived in northern New Jersey. I picked up my mother’s friend, and we drove to the southern part of the state where the mortgage company was located. The loan officer handed my friend a stack of documents to sign, but she didn’t explain anything. My friend had to come up with $500 for the appraisal, which was an extreme hardship. Afterwards, I called BNY’s sister company to get more information, so that I could provide more details to my friend. I wanted to make sure that, before BNY started offering reverse mortgages, we understood what we were talking about. Just because consumers need it and they have it, doesn’t mean that they don’t need to understand it, along with the implications. RM: Were you originating forward mortgages at the time? VW: No, I was the operations manager for three Bank of New York offices; two of them were in New Jersey, and a third was a private banking office in New York City. Vanessa White, Eastern Regional Sales Manager, Reverse Mortgage Funding LLC By Darryl Hicks Vanessa White 12 REVERSE MORTGAGE / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2020