Jan/Feb 2023 RMM

YOU CAN BOOK a flight, order a meal and open a bank account on a cellphone. You can even apply for a home loan. But when homeowners launch their Google searches for reverse mortgages, they eventually land on a process dominated by paper and personal interaction—at least for now. “I definitely see that changing,” says Sergey Dyakin, chief information officer at reverse mortgage subservicer Celink, based in Lansing, MI, and Austin, TX. Dyakin and other executives have been working to transform the tools used in all facets of the reverse mortgage business, from loan origination to closing to servicing. The transformation promises to create a more efficient process and a better customer experience but also to grow the market for reverse mortgages. Baseline After years of investments in technology by forward mortgage lenders, more than 80 percent of the interactions between borrowers and servicers are digital. In some cases, the share is as high as 95 percent, Dyakin says. For reverse mortgages, however, person-to-person interactions make up 80 percent of the total, Dyakin says. The gap stems, in part, from the nature of reverse borrowers. They are, by default, older than the average Technology Advances Take Hold Companies Accelerate Use of Digital Tools in Loan Process By Joel Berg Sergey Dyakin 28 REVERSE MORTGAGE / JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2023

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