Reverse Mastermind Summit Looks To Spark An Lo Renaissance

Reverse mortgage veterans Loren Riddick and Shannon Hicks are launching a new event this spring that aims to increase loan officer sales skills across the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) and proprietary loan spectrum.

The Reverse Mastermind Summit — scheduled for May 5-7 in Riddick’s hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee — will feature several big-name speakers with deep knowledge of the reverse mortgage space. The speakers include Scott Harmes of C2 Financial, John Luddy of Supreme Lending, George Vrban of Movement Mortgage and experienced financial adviser Ryan Ponsford.

The organizers expect 200 to 300 attendees and are designing the summit to be different from other industry events through a focus on sales skills and a high-energy, TED Talk-style format. They’ve led similar but smaller events in the past — including a lively roundtable discussion at last year’s National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA) Annual Meeting in Minneapolis.

“Over time, we have, as a community, realized that we need new blood,” said Riddick, the national director of reverse lending for NEXA Mortgage. “We need to get out in front of this thing and be available to the loan officers out there that want to know about reverse — and that want to do it the right way for the right reasons.”

Hicks, the president of marketing technology firm Reverse Focus, said the event aims to address and correct the long-term decline in sales volume across the industry. He pointed to estimates that reverse mortgages reach about 2% of the eligible market, and in keeping with the Pareto principle, about 80% of that volume is done by 20% of licensed LOs.

“In our industry, we’ve almost kind of fooled ourselves into thinking, ‘Oh, we’re not salespeople. We’re educators.’ And I say phooey to that,” Hicks quipped. “Because you could be educating people, but if you don’t have the skill of crafted communication in a way that you can help explain what a reverse mortgage is, you’re lacking sales skills.

“We’ve got an amazing product, but it’s counterintuitive, it’s grossly misunderstood, it’s maligned in the media, and so we need to be able to train salespeople, men and women, to be effective communicators.”

The industry’s largest lenders — Mutual of Omaha Mortgage, Finance of America and Longbridge Financial — are among the event sponsors. And while Riddick and Hicks believe the summit will be a success, they said they’re not looking to compete with NRMLA for attention.

“If it wasn’t for NRMLA … I wouldn’t be who I am and wouldn’t have been able to help so many people without that,” Riddick said. “But we realized that there needed to be a sales-focused event that’s fully immersive.”

Hicks noted that NRMLA events typically include break-out sessions on compliance, technology and other topics not directly tied to sales or originations. “We’re not trying to replicate what NRMLA does each year,” he added. “This is a sales-centric thing that is geared for the reverse mortgage professional in the trenches day in and day out.”