July-Aug 2020

At the same time, there may be an increase in busi- ness. Over the past few months in the reverse mortgage world, more customers began looking to draw on lines of credit this spring as their investment assets shriveled. New customers started to see the value of the product as a supplement. All those factors can be a chal- lenge for people who are not used to working from home, says Shane Mathew, vice president of profes- sional services for Virtual Corp., a consulting firm based in Rockaway, NJ, that assists companies in disaster recovery and business continuity. “We can technically do it, but companies don’t always plan for the ramifications of doing it,” he says. To top it off, cyber threats also pose a risk, which can be especially problematic for financial services, such as reverse mortgage lending. Regulations often assume peo- ple can work in an office behind closed doors. “How do you do that at home where a child may have to use the same computer for school?” Mathew asks. Indeed, cybersecurity had been one of the most press- ing issues for disaster planners prior to the pandemic. Over the last few years, high-profile ransomware attacks had shut down local governments, and businesses worried they might become targets, too. At Reverse Mortgage Solutions, the IT staff worked five days straight to get 400 staff members up and running at home, overcoming numerous challenges related to bandwidth and security, Flynne says. “They were heroes, because it took about 12 hours of head-down work every day for them,” she says. “We also were fortunate that we had a couple of power users within the business who could also front some of the user calls on connectivity issues.There are a lot of people in the busi- ness who now have an additional skill to add to their resumés.” About 40 people continued coming into the office to perform essential tasks, such as funding draw requests and handling the mail, Flynne says. The company’s pan- demic checklist, meanwhile, called for establishing three separate clean rooms. The rooms are cleaned twice a day, deep-cleaned every night and sanitized every 30 days to hospital standards. “With all the documents that are physical that come and go, you can never be too careful,” Flynne says. As for the employees still coming into the office, they are all on a single floor but spread out to keep their distance. And no visitors are allowed. But even though the company was back to normal operations—albeit remotely—within five days, there were still factors that the pandemic plan had not fully considered. One was the uncertainty surrounding an endpoint. After a month in lockdown, most Americans were still working from home with little sense of when, or if, normal life would return. “It requires everybody to be very, very flexible,” Flynne remarks. “And, on the pandemic plan, there was no aspect that said an infinite amount of patience is required.” Another overlooked factor is the widespread impact of the pan- demic. Not only is Reverse Mortgage Solutions working remotely, so are its vendors and customers. “We’re accustomed to dealing with a disas- ter,” Flynne says. “We’re just not accustomed to a worldwide disaster where so many of the companies and individuals that we depend upon are as adversely impacted as, if not more than, we are.” The reach of the pandemic also was a factor for American Advisors Group (AAG), based in Orange, CA. The firm’s plan focused on business continuity in general, not a pandemic in particular. It also contem- plated an event striking one or two offices, like a fire or an earthquake, not something that touched company offices around the country, says Rick Lieber, AAG’s chief risk officer. New Normal continued on page 20 “We’re accustomed to dealing with a disaster. We’re just not accustomed to a worldwide disaster where so many of the companies and individuals that we depend upon are as adversely impacted as, if not more than, we are.” —Leslie Flynne, Reverse Mortgage Solutions Inc. Shane Mathew Rick Lieber REVERSE MORTGAGE / JULY-AUGUST 2020 19