Attendees encouraged by reverse mortgage conference in California

Attendee reactions were generally positive, from executives through front-line loan originators and other industry participants. Ashley Honoré Smith, senior vice president of brand and communications at Finance of America (FOA), was particularly interested in the discussion around the industry advocacy update.

“It is manifestly clear that we have a distribution problem, and that that needs to be a focus for the category to bring in more people talking about this product,” she said in an interview with HousingWire‘s Reverse Mortgage Daily.

“When it looks like a program that is on the fringes, that really creates a barrier for everyday people, as well as the broader mortgage industry, to adopt it.”

Jonathan Scarpati, FOA’s chief production officer, was encouraged by the event too.

“Anytime we can spend this amount of face-to-face time with our customers is always extremely beneficial,” Scarpati said. “I think some of the sessions have been hitting home with a lot of people and overall, it’s a great meeting.”

Others got value out of the event’s other programming content, even if the material didn’t align perfectly with their industry work.

Alvin Toney, branch manager with NID Housing Counseling Agency in Moreno Valley, California, said that while some of the more mechanical discussions around topics like servicing or secondary markets weren’t as relevant to his work, he felt like he absorbed helpful insights from other content.

“There was definitely a lot of stuff that we could take back to the Inland Empire, which is about 40 miles from here,” he said.

Toney’s colleague, Lynell Holden, is not specifically a reverse mortgage counselor, but she does work as a reverse mortgage loan officer and praised the content of the event.

“I thought it was comprehensive,” she said. “I learned some information and also made a couple of contacts. I think that I need to come to more of the conferences, because everybody always has some tidbits that’ll help you within the business.”

Mark Klein with Citywide Home Mortgage found the camaraderie with other reverse mortgage professionals to be valuable.

“It was great networking with other like-minded professionals about a product that is very misunderstood and underutilized,” he said. “It’s our mission to get people educated so our seniors can retire comfortably in their own homes.”

Carlos Camargo, the reverse mortgage division director at the Franklin Loan Center in Ventura, California, enjoyed the event but felt like more industry participants should have attended.

“I think it’s interesting that not enough people in our industry choose to come and support our events,” he said. “There is valuable information, from the regulatory panel to the loan officer panels, to be able to pick up an idea. It’s nice to be able to have people you can talk to but also have a variety of products.”

Christina Harmes Hika of Reverse Loan Solutions in San Diego said she appreciated the lunchtime keynote speech from economist Richard Green, director of the University of Southern California’s Lusk Center for Real Estate.

“The economist really blew my mind today,” she said. “I really like to geek out on that kind of stuff, I always have. Overall, I think the event was really good. It was interesting that it was only one day, but I really enjoyed the [advocacy] session too.”

Amber Jones of C2 Financial appreciated that NRMLA was focused on a holistic perspective of the reverse mortgage ecosystem as opposed to focusing only on origination.

“It shows how NRMLA is not just focusing on the originating piece, but they’re also focusing on it in its entirety as an industry,” she said. “So I really enjoyed that. I also really enjoyed the economist’s talk, since it got more thoughts flowing for me on how to continue looking for clients’ needs.”