Nov/Dec 2021 RMM

In Reverse Education Remains Key to Future By Thomas A. Barstow STARTING WITH THIS LAST EDITION of 2021 and the first issue of 2022, Reverse Mortgage magazine explores some topics that we hope you can use through the New Year and beyond to educate lingering skeptics of reverse mortgages. Academics and professional financial planners increas- ingly accept that reverse mortgages are a viable tool that can help millions of Americans enjoy a better retirement. Yet doubters remain, often because they are too busy to truly understand how the products work or uninterested in learning because of bad publicity years ago. Increasingly, leaders in the industry put the onus on all of us to do a better job of changing such mindsets through two key virtues—patience and communication—that can be used to educate everyone about the true power of reverse mort- gages to change lives. Looking in the mirror often isn’t easy because of the tendency to ignore flaws. Experts in this edition, as well as in January, offer advice and data that will give everyone confidence to proceed. “Confident” is one term that Susan Haviland, CRMP, national sales trainer for the wholesale division at Finance of America Reverse, uses when talking about how to best approach financial planners and others with the benefits of reverse mortgages. The products can solve many problems for the clients of these retirement experts, but they might not know how reverse mortgages work. A confident loan originator can show them, Haviland suggests in the article How Nuance Improves Sales (p. 26). In the article Going Reverse in a ForwardWorld (p. 22), Harlan Accola, CRMP, national director of reverse mort- gages at Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp., suggests changing the way loan officers think about their roles. Instead of merely selling mortgages in a transactional nature, he and others say, loan originators would prosper if they approached clients as mortgage planners, similar to the way the financial planning industry works to offer the best solutions for their clients. Everyone, especially the academics, agrees that people desire sound retirement advice. For generations, statistics consistently have shown that many people don’t save nearly enough for retirement and are ill-prepared for their golden years, as outlined in the cover story Academics, Experts Talk Equity Release (p. 18). Numerous advocates for seniors diligently pursue solutions that include equity release pro- grams, where reverse mortgages often can be the best option. Immense potential is there. Up to 4.5 million senior house- holds could benefit from an equity release product, including reverse mortgages, according to a 2020 report by Stephanie Moulton of The Ohio State University and Christopher Mayer, who serves as the Paul Milstein Professor of Real Estate at Columbia Business School and CEO of Longbridge Financial. That report is part of the discussion in the cover story, with further details found in the Numbers piece (p. 36). Several people offer practical advice on how to think about selling reverse mortgage products. For example, pri- vate-label reverse mortgages play an important role, which In Reverse continued on page 4 REVERSE MORTGAGE / NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2021 3