Industry-Leading Reverse Mortgage Lender American Financial (FOA) has detailed some of its ambitions to attract senior borrowers, including new TV ads featuring former borrowers American Consulting Group (AAG) Become FOA spokesman Tom Selleck.
In last week’s second-quarter earnings report, FOA President Kristen Sieffert provided new details about how FOA will leverage AAG’s assets. That includes endorsement deals with the “Blue Bloods” and “Magnum PI” stars
Go to market
Sieffert said the company also launched a new corporate website, new ads featuring Selleck and updated its social media outreach and multimedia advertising efforts following a recent brand integration under the FOA umbrella.
“In conjunction with brand unification, we also developed and introduced a single company purpose and shared values,” Sievert said on the earnings call. “This achievement marks an important step in our evolution, enabling full alignment across the organization to maximize our productivity as a team and realize the full value of our investment.”
She explained that the company’s retail lending unit’s market entry strategy was revised, including abandoning “strategies that have not worked well over time.” “We expect there will be external rewards from this shift, and early results support this theory.”
Proprietary products
Sieffert also said the company is seeing strong demand in its wholesale pipeline for its proprietary suite of reverse mortgage products, which operates under the “HomeSafe” brand.
“In the second quarter, we enhanced [loan-to-value] HomeSafe Second aims to appeal to a wider range of borrowers and introduce simplified underwriting options for customers with high credit quality. “During the same period, our submission volume increased by 168% month-over-month and our average turnaround time decreased by 30%.”
This follows moves in October 2023 to expand the availability of HomeSafe Second by rolling out the product to more wholesale brokers and direct retail loan officers. Brokers have shown significant interest in the product and FOA aims to channel this interest into more advertising next season.
“We will continue to expand state-by-state each quarter and plan to launch HomeSafe Second-specific marketing campaigns in our retail channels by the end of the third quarter,” Sieffert added.
expansion efforts
Tom Selleck originally became AAG spokesman in 2016, the result of a months-long search following the death of former spokesman and former Senator Fred Thompson.
“It’s critical that we work with spokespeople that older homeowners trust and feel connected to,” former AAG chief executive Reza Jahangiri said at the time.
Sieffert said that following FOA’s announcement of the AAG acquisition at the end of 2022 house lineReverse Mortgage Daily (RMD) said the acquisition of AAG’s marketing agency was a key element of the deal, which included Selleck’s services as a spokesperson.
The FOA has produced some new ads involving Selleck in materials provided to its shareholder website. Selleck appears in three 2-minute spots, which the company says help represent the newly unified brand while “increasing market visibility and customer recognition.”
Late last month, FOA also posted a TV ad for the actor on its website Youtube channel. In the same supplemental filing, FOA said its sentiment analysis of media reports on reverse mortgages has been steadily improving, with coverage of the company itself leaning toward “neutral to positive.”
In supplementary comments to its second-quarter 2024 results, FOA said July “was the month with the highest amount raised and the highest number of submissions” since acquiring AAG’s retail assets. It noted that lower mortgage rates are expected to have an impact on third-quarter results.
Sieffert also discussed some of the company’s efforts to expand awareness of its products throughout the addressable market, which has traditionally dwarfed broader activity in the reverse mortgage industry.
“We continue to invest in digital technologies to capitalize on growth opportunities and create tailored experiences for our customers,” Sievert said. “With the heavy lifting [loan origination system] As the brand transformation wraps up, we’re shifting the team’s focus to building these features as a top priority and look forward to sharing the latest information on these enhancements as they roll out.
During a question-and-answer session at the end of the earnings call, Sievert was asked about loan volumes. She explained that the increased interest the company has seen has been incorporated into the guidance issued for the third quarter.
Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) Endorsement Data Reverse Market Insights (RMI), FOA is the nation’s leading reverse mortgage loan originator, having endorsed 6,988 loans during the 12 months ended July 31, 2024. There is origin data not included in that number.
