Allegiant Reverse Services Founder Rob Awalt Reflects On 10 Years Of Growth

Allegiant Reverse Services is celebrating its 10th anniversary in the reverse mortgage industry. Founded during a period of market uncertainty, the company has expanded its title and settlement operations to serve clients in 48 states, completed 130,000-plus reverse mortgage transactions and built a tenured, high-retention workforce.

As the reverse mortgage industry continues to evolve through changing regulations and needs, as well as new technologies, the company says the importance of trust and experienced professionals remains unchanged.

HousingWire‘s Reverse Mortgage Daily recently spoke with Rob Awalt, founder and president of Allegiant Reverse Services about the company’s first decade of business, the biggest changes he’s witnessed in the reverse mortgage market and what he’s looking ahead to in the next decade.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Sarah Wolak: Given that Allegiant has been around 10 years, that means it was founded during a period of significant disruption in the reverse mortgage industry. What were the beginning stages of building the company and what is it like today?

Rob Awalt: Like any new venture, there’s a lot of energy and excitement about doing something new, and there’s also a lot of waking up at 2 o’clock in the morning.

There was a lot of disruption in the market. The confidence we had moving forward came from having earned our keep over many years at a previous company, building relationships in the industry and a track record of closing a lot of transactions with people who trusted us.

That gave us confidence that we could do it again. The difficult part was that even though the market was in tough shape, we were closing about one-third of all the business nationwide at that time — maybe 30% of the national market. Getting up to speed and building capacity became one of our biggest challenges because people wanted to continue doing business with us at the new company right away, and that created its own concerns and problems.

Wolak: Why was that?

Awalt: We weren’t fully set up yet. When you do a startup, you’re done with what you were doing on a Friday, and on Monday you’re starting a new company — it takes time to establish systems, hire people and secure licenses.

People were asking when they could start opening orders and we were still in the initial phases, beta testing and getting everything in place. We didn’t leave our jobs, spend six months building a company and then launch. We had an idea, three or four of us started it, and then we began adding people. So those relationships and customers started calling early and often, asking when they could start doing business. That gave us confidence we were going to be OK. We just had to build our capacity and we were able to do that.

Like any startup, people were doing things they wouldn’t be doing six months later. They were setting up printers, copiers and fax lines. It was a true small company startup and it grew from there.

Wolak: You touched on relationships. In a write-up you did with the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA), you mentioned that about 25 people have been with the company for more than 10 years. You also talk about a “decade of trust.” Can you talk about that philosophy, and how you build and maintain trust in an industry that has sometimes struggled with misconceptions and misinformation?

Awalt: It’s been our focus — and again, a lot of those folks spent 10 years with us at a previous company. The core group has really been together longer than the company itself and the 10-year anniversary.

From day one, when we ventured into the reverse space, most people came from the forward title business. We started getting some bandwidth in 2004 through 2007, when very few people were paying attention to reverse. We earned credibility with some of the larger companies because we were dedicated to the space long before most others.

We made a commitment to the industry, and we’re a mission-based company. People bought into the factor that we’re working with a protected class and this product is misaligned. … We are laser-focused on the borrower first. If we take care of the borrower, the client naturally gets taken care of as well. That’s been our goal from day one. We still regularly discuss how important our role is in this space.

When I look back on the last 10 years and think about what I’m grateful for, it comes down to the care factor and dedication of our people. Reverse mortgages are complex transactions. It’s an all-asset transaction, meaning every asset in our building is touching it: our legal department, our underwriting department … everybody has to touch that file because they’re complex and difficult. And as we expanded nationwide, our team learned the complexities of not just every state, but each county, township and borough. Watching them build that expertise has been impressive.

We spend a lot of time evaluating where we can improve, especially from a technology standpoint, because technology is accelerating everything. But there are areas in our industry, especially in the reverse space, where more technology is needed. It needs to speed up in certain areas, but picking the right areas to speed up and become more efficient is more important than just speeding things up.

The most important touch points are in escrow — working with the client, working with the customer, trying to get the loan closed and being available to that borrower who sometimes struggles a little bit. Those are the natural things.

Hearing our folks on the phone, you can tell they’re talking to a senior because they’ve got this quiet demeanor about them. They’re having a conversation with these people. They’re not just talking at them and trying to explain something.

So you say, “How do you get those people? How do we build our culture?” Let’s face facts: We do it, we work at it, and we try to cultivate that team-first and mission-first mentality. But those conversations they have with people are a big part of our glue.

Wolak: You were an athlete before getting into financial services. What inspired you to get into reverse mortgages and stay in the business for so long?

Awalt: I got recruited into a startup company on the forward side, so that’s how it happened. I owned a 1031 exchange company that I was able to sell to a bank, and that led me into the title business and relationships with different business leaders in the greater Sacramento area.

I had a partner in the exchange business who was in the title business, and he introduced me to people and encouraged me to get involved. Back then, I already had contacts and was running in those circles through the 1031 business. When we sold the 1031 company, it was time to transition, and that’s how I ended up on the title side of things.

We had a small operation that did reverse business, and we were able to cultivate that. We got lucky because the biggest company at the time, Financial Freedom, took a liking to us. We dedicated not only an office but eventually a larger team to the business, and that grew from an office to a bigger office to a standalone division.

At that point, I had to make a decision. Was I going to go with this growth nationwide, or was I going to continue doing what I was doing, which was forward commercial business locally in the Greater Sacramento market? I chose to go national and explore that avenue. The nice thing was that we were able to grow with our customers. As they expanded into new states, we expanded with them on the same timeline.

We didn’t have to be national on day one. They would tell us they were getting licenses in certain states, and we’d have advance notice, so we’d go get licensed in those states as well. We were fortunate to have, for lack of a better term, an amazing company taking us along for the ride because we were good at what we did and dedicated to the space. It wasn’t some big, planned-out strategy. It was organic, and we capitalized on it and ran with it. That’s what brings us to where we are today.

Wolak: You talked about being taken under the wing of Financial Freedom. How did you know 10 years ago that it was time to leave the nest and start your own endeavor?

Awalt: Financial Freedom had exited long before that. … But by that point, we had evolved enough that we were doing business with what were considered the big three at the time — Bank of America, Wells Fargo and MetLife. We evolved alongside the industry.

Around 2015, we saw an opportunity to become independent. We were part of a larger title company, but entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs. We looked at the opportunity to go out on our own, double down on the space and the relationships we had built, and that really launched us.

You take that leap of faith and then you go to work. We hit the ground running and started putting everything together. Four years later, COVID hits and throws another curveball at you. We were able to adapt and adjust to that. We weren’t for sale and we didn’t have our hand up in the air, but we got the attention of some people who wanted us to be part of their portfolio.

Stewart Title has been good to us. They allow us to operate and do what we do while supporting us in areas where it helps. Third-party risk is a real thing. We were a smaller company at the time with a couple of owners, and larger lenders sometimes look at that and say, “We’re willing to work with you, but we’re not going to commit a large amount of business and create that exposure.”

When you have a company like Stewart Title behind you, third-party risk largely comes off the table and their comfort level increases. That’s just smart business. It’s been a good fit for us in those ways.

Wolak: Looking ahead to Allegiant’s next 10 years, what are your priorities for the company? What does success look like?

Awalt: The reverse space is evolving as we speak, with all the proprietary products that Longbridge Financial, Mutual of Omaha, Finance of America, SmartFi and others have introduced. They weren’t relying solely on the HECM or government-backed product. They evolved because they had to, and it’s good to have more products available for retirement planning and broader financial planning.

We’re doing the same thing. We’re continuing to evolve and support the things that help with lending to seniors. I don’t want to limit that to reverse mortgages or even just lending to seniors. You could call it senior-centric, retirement-centric, stability-centric or financial planning-centric. We’re always focused on those areas and asking where we can add value.

As a title company, you’re not out there dictating terms. You’re not the tip of the spear. We’ve always focused on where we fit in and how we can help our lenders and the broader industry. It’s not just about getting transactions. It’s about being part of the framework that’s helping move the industry forward and making these products more accessible so the space can continue to grow.