Ginnie Mae, which manages the government-guaranteed portfolio of forward and reverse mortgage-backed securities (MBS), announced this week at a National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA) event that it will release initial details of its forthcoming Home Equity Conversion Mortgage-backed Securities (HMBS) product as soon as next month. RMD submitted a request for comment to Ginnie Mae shortly thereafter, and on Friday received a response from Sam Valverde, the company’s acting president and the speaker at the NRMLA event. Sam Valverde When asked to offer additional details about the ..read more

Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) endorsements declined by 4.2% in March, a dynamic primarily driven by an drop in endorsements from the wholesale side of the business even as the retail side saw a month-over-month improvement in originations. This is according to data compiled by Reverse Market Insight (RMI). Retail endorsements gained 9% over their February totals, rising to 1,233 loans, while wholesale endorsements dropped by 2.3% to 824 loans, a noticeable if modest divide between the two business channels. When asked about the dynamics driving the business this way, it was mostly dri ..read more

Ginnie Mae is aiming to roll out plans for its new Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM)-backed Securities (HMBS) product by the end of the year, according to acting president Sam Valverde, who spoke at the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA) Eastern Regional Meeting in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. The news was first reported by Inside Mortgage Finance. Sam Valverde Speaking to attendees during a keynote speech, Valverde said that the government-owned company had “a reputation of being less than transparent,” according to the reporting, and wanted to “sensitize” the rever ..read more

The share of older workers in the U.S. has grown significantly since the turn of the century, with 29.5% of workers in 2023 at least 65 years old, compared to 23% in 2000, according to a new report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). This occurred as labor force participation by older Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, while the rate of those 65 and older did not change, the data suggested. “The movement of the Baby Boom generation out of the age groups younger than 65 has made the composition of the older workforce even older,” Craig Co ..read more

Multichannel lender New American Funding (NAF) is going big on reverse mortgages. As already evidenced by its ambitious new marketing campaign, “Old Wives,” the company is also aiming to streamline its existing presence in the reverse mortgage market. And it seeks to expand the number of available loan officers and strategic development tools to continue building on the momentum that company executive say they’re seeing in the space. To get a better picture of these initiatives and priorities, RMD sat down with Shannon Robinson, vice president of reverse mortgage lending at NAF, to gauge the w ..read more

Ocwen Financial Corp, the parent company of PHH Mortgage Corp. and its reverse mortgage subsidiary Liberty Reverse Mortgage, announced on Tuesday that its shareholders have approved the company’s planned rebranding initiative to Onity Group. The initial phase of the rebranding will first go into effect for the parent company on June 10 and will roll out to other subsidiaries — including Liberty — by this fall. “We are very pleased that our shareholders have approved our name change to Onity Group,” Glen Messina, CEO of Ocwen Financial, said in a statement. “We look forward to this new chapter ..read more

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) this month announced a settlement with Arkansas-based Bank of England over alleged violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). The bank has been issued an order to pay a civil penalty of $1.5 million, and the FDIC has also issued similar enforcement actions to nine former employees of the bank. “Veterans and their families who were deceived into refinancing their VA loans were overcharged and did not receive the loan ..read more

Just about a year ago, Chicago-based multichannel mortgage lender Guaranteed Rate announced its plans to expand its reverse mortgage division — including around the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) for Purchase (H4P) product. Roughly five months after that announcement, the company named Ryan Ogata as the division’s new executive vice president. Ogata joined the reverse industry for the first time and said in a subsequent RMD interview that he sought to take advantage of a “market creation” opportunity and fulfill the company’s goals in the space. This week, RMD spoke with Ogata and Guar ..read more

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont signed a bill into law on Tuesday that aims to improve the prospects for seniors who seek to age in place in their current homes. The law, which was supported by senior advocacy organization AARP, creates a state registry of home care providers to promote awareness and accessibility for home-based care. It also requires home health care and aide agencies, hospice agencies and homemaker-companion agencies to submit information about their employees to the registry, and it adds more avenues to publicly accessible information for aging-in-place programs and more. State ..read more

A study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) in 2022 aimed to assess the state of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program over a 20-year period. The study, released late last year, examined three core elements of HECM program effectiveness between 2000 and 2020. It was conducted by analytics firm SP Group LLC and its subcontractor Econometrica Inc. RMD already examined the study’s section on various HECM policy implementations during that time, but the report also included a detailed section o ..read more