Sept-Oct2020 Issue

In Reverse Those involved in loan servicing are telling us that some of the changes forced by the virus could be good for the industry, which is a conclusion that observers on the sales side of the business have been saying since the pandemic started. “Electronic requests and various checks and balances forced on our industry have made it come into the pres- ent,” Gherardi tells Olshaker. “We’ve collectively always blamed seniors for being slow and confused and so not willing to embrace technology. Maybe that was true 20 years ago, but I don’t think it’s largely true any longer.” On the sales side, we tried to dig deeper into the les- sons being learned that we explored in earlier issues of the magazine as the crisis was unfolding. Joel Berg interviews sales experts in two articles for this edition, including in Loan Officers Adapt (p. 22). “I think, generally speaking, people are a little bit more sensitive to the fragility of their finances,” Neil Sweren, reverse division manager at Atlantic Coast Mortgage LLC, Fairfax, VA, tells Berg. That allows for loan originators to offer the help and guidance that seniors need. Meanwhile, companies will continue to bring peo- ple back into offices as new information about the virus changes daily. “As we know, we are in pretty uncharted territory,” Shari G. Kleiner, an employment law attorney with Kleiner Feldman Plotkin PLLC in Washington, DC, says in The New Now (p. 26). “This is a transition. This is not the new normal. This is not forever.” She and others note that this fall and winter could involve new challenges that weren’t seen when companies first started to re-open in the summer. The trick, Kleiner says, is to have someone dedicated to understanding cur- rent employment laws but who can stay on top of changes involving COVID-19 overlays. Rachel Platt, founder of the strategic human resources company PLATTinum Consulting, which is also based in the Washington, DC, metro area, says what should be obvi- ous but often gets lost in a time of crisis: Communication is key. “If you are not doing it already, this is the time to enhance your two-way communications,” she says. “You should be proactively seeking input from your employees at every step during this process.” In Reverse continued from page 3 4 REVERSE MORTGAGE / SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2020