servicer. Having made that determination, we then decided to acquire the Liberty Reverse Mortgage platform. RM: What role did you play in this effort? ER: I worked on all the upfront economic analysis, determined the selection of the different folks we wanted to look at as far as acquisitions, and performed the due diligence and integration for the acquisition of Liberty Reverse Mortgage. I was working on other corporate growth initiatives, like building the bank for Genworth, so I didn’t join the Liberty platform. It’s cool joining AAG more than a decade later, because now I’m able to personally finish the work I started all those years ago. RM: You joined AAG one year ago. What has been the biggest lesson you’ve learned thus far? ER: I can tell you several lessons, such as how detrimental the bond market can be to this industry even though it should essentially be recession-proof or how different the experiences are with reverse mortgage customers versus the traditional mortgage space. Frankly, I think the biggest lesson is that we really need to double down as both a business and as an industry on adoption. The level of equity available for seniors is estimated to be around $10.6 trillion. Right now, home values are continuing to rise. I recall seeing some data from Freddie Mac recently where it anticipates—even this year during a possible recessionary environment—a ten percent increase in home-price appreciation and probably another five percent in 2023. There seems to be a rather obvious answer to liquidity challenges and inflationary pressures. When you think about folks who are living on a fixed income, reverse mortgage solutions are a legitimate answer. I really believe it’s on us to turn that ability, if you will, for reverse mortgage solutions into customer propensity and engage them in a meaningful way that drives adoption. RM: When they join a new company, presidents and CEOs often like to instill a part of themselves into the corporate culture. What values have you tried to instill in your employees? ER: There are a few elements of corporate culture that I take with me to every new job assignment. Leadership is paramount not only to meeting corporate objectives but also employee and customer engagement. There’s a literal open-door policy, so that I hear all our employees’ voices. There’s accountability. Customer satisfaction. Listening to folks on the front lines is paramount. Whether it’s our mortgage loan officers, our customer service representatives, fulfillment partners or others who have firsthand contact with customers, the insights that those personnel on the front lines provide is so valuable. I’m a firm believer that we’re all in this together. If we consistently capture the voice of our customers and our employees, we will identify corporate methods to make them better and happier. Looking back early in my career, Lean Six Sigma is what built and grew GE for decades. The one thing we always talked about was the VOC, or voice of the customer, and the VOE, or voice of the employee. Unequivocally, every single project that I was personally engaged with when it came to Lean Six Sigma at GE had a crucial element of really understanding the VOC and VOE and then incorporating that into what we did. RM: For the uninitiated, can you please remind our readers what Lean Six Sigma refers to? ER: It’s a process improvement protocol or toolkit. There’s a debate over whether GE or Motorola created it. They are two different tools. There’s Lean and then there’s Six Sigma. Lean is about eliminating what’s called “process waste” and making sure that you look at the entire value stream or customer journey and remove all the wasteful elements to make things easier for your employees and your customers. Six Sigma, on the other hand, is all about process discipline and control. It’s about making sure you take variability out of your process to become more efficient, productive and effective. RM: What changes are you considering over the next 12 to 24 months to build AAG’s market share? ER: The single most important program we’re incorporating right now is called Delight the Customer. We’re taking a very hard look at all our customer touch points, including process execution, technology and third-party relationships, so that we can deeply understand every single customer engagement. At the same time, we’re speaking with customers, both past and present, to understand moments of delight and moments of friction, so that we make concerted From the Top continued on page 14 From the Top REVERSE MORTGAGE / SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2022 13
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