Increased adoption
Asked about the progress of the reverse mortgage business in the first half of this year, Ogata said he was pleased with the unit’s performance and the unit’s ability to recruit the company’s forward mortgage professionals to carefully study reverse mortgages.
“I would say, especially in the last two or three months, our sales force has adopted more technology,” he said. “It took us a little while to get up and running. Admittedly, I didn’t know much about reverse. I had to learn the business before I could actually go out and sell it. But for now, think of me as a forward world and the middleman in the reverse world.
It took some time to establish flow between forward and reverse salespeople, but now the larger sales team has grown significantly.
“We started with just a few loan officers looking at the product, and now we have 900 people in our sales force who have completed our certification process and are actively selling the product,” he said.
A “United Nations Interpreter”
Polman spoke about reverse mortgages last month on The Gathering house line, adds that traditionally there has been a barrier between a company’s dedicated forward and reverse salespeople. Removing this barrier is one way the sector can move forward.
“Traditionally, there are reverse salespeople and there are forward salespeople,” he said. “Ryan played a key role in bridging the gap between the two. Because of his background managing large sales teams, he was seen as one of them. He said, ‘Hey, I’m one of you. This is How you position it. Ryan helps them understand how to engage with consumers and referral partners.
Pohlman equated Ogata’s role to that of a United Nations interpreter, helping delegates provide instant translation in a language they understand so they don’t get lost in important conversations.
“For some forward loan officers, this is a completely new opportunity,” Polman said. “While many people have financial advisors as referral sources, the vast majority do not. Ryan shows them that they can expand their referral sources by adding back-sells. … He bridges the two different approaches of forward selling and reverse selling. language to make the transition smoother for everyone involved.
no difference
Ogata added that a hallmark of the department’s approach is to avoid conscious divisions between forward and reverse salespeople. Having the company’s loan officers sell both sets of products helps improve the overall quality of the product without creating unnecessary dividing lines, he said.
“We don’t consider someone a forward or reverse loan officer,” Ogata said. “We’re trying to get forward loan officers thinking about how to start selling reverse loans because it’s not difficult. They just need to be familiar with enough reverse-specific terminology and understand the mechanics of the program.
That way, when a customer walks in the door, they can diagnose the need and recommend the right product, whether it’s a forward or reverse mortgage.
Asked how long it would take for him to gain sufficient reverse education, Ogata said his assessment led him to a conclusion that is relatively uncommon for forward mortgage-first companies.
All about language
“Now that I understand both sides, if I have to look at this objectively, it’s easier to reverse than to move forward,” he said. “I’m from the Bay Area and have been a big (rental) guy my whole career up until the past six months or so. From an underwriting perspective, from a high-level qualifications perspective, it’s an easier certification.
Instead, the complications stem more from language-specific differences than anything else, he said.
“Objectively speaking, I find forward space to be much more complex than backward space. When you look at it from that perspective, reverse is really more about understanding the terms and possibly translating them into forward terms,” Ogata said . “The concepts are not that difficult to master. You just have to understand their mechanics and translate them so that forwards can grasp it.
