Smartfi hires industry expert Fiore to lead its newly created reverse retail division
Based in San Diego Smartfi home loanswhich operates primarily as a wholesale reverse mortgage lender, will launch a retail division offering reverse mortgage products and has hired industry veteran Paul Fiore as president of retail operations.
“I am pleased to announce that I have begun my new role as president of retail at Smartfi Home Loans,” Fiore posted on social media on Monday. “Joining a team of highly talented professionals to build a retail platform from scratch is an incredible opportunity.”
Fiore, who last worked at Finance of America (FOA) after taking over his old employer American consultant group (AAG) sees a unique opportunity to build a new retail division in the industry from the ground up. He expressed his excitement about the opportunity in an interview with HousingWire‘s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD).
Making the move
Fiore described feeling a sense of possibility after leaving FOA.
“At the beginning of June I had the opportunity – for the first time in fifteen years – to explore the opportunities in the market and think about how I would proceed,” he said. “I definitely knew I wanted to stay in the reverse mortgage industry. I’m still very passionate about what we do and the future potential that still exists for us. I explored the landscape, started thinking about what was a good fit for me and started having conversations with Smartfi.”
Early in these conversations, Fiore said he felt like Smartfi was the right choice for him.
“For me, the most successful working relationships are those where you connect with the people you will be working with and you have a shared vision for the future,” he said. “Through multiple conversations with different people in the organization, many of whom I know because they are industry veterans, it became very clear that there was a shared vision for the future.”
He officially started as the company’s president of retail on July 29, giving him the opportunity to build a retail division from the ground up. That’s because Smartfi today operates exclusively as a reverse wholesale lender. Having some symbiosis between the existing wholesale channel and the new retail channel will be critical to the company’s future, Fiore explains.
“Having a retail platform and a wholesale platform that can work together is a holistic benefit to the organization,” Fiore said. “Innovation comes about when you build a retail platform from the ground up, starting with the basic technology and developing the infrastructure. You have to think about where the market is going, where the borrowers are going and how they want to transact.”
Keeping the market trajectory and borrower preferences in mind will be critical as the new division builds out, he added. It’s also important to keep in mind how the reverse mortgage industry and borrowers have changed.
“Today’s borrower is very different from the borrower of 10 years ago,” he said.
Ground floor
Fiore said he is excited about the prospect of getting on the ground floor of a brand new division, which he said is similar to his early days at AAG. As for the first steps, tools such as the technology stack and the organization’s overall workflow will need to be fully evaluated before the company starts hiring staff, including loan officers.
If the company moved too quickly and hired LOs before the engineers were identified, it could prove suboptimal, he said.
“To me, it’s not just about hiring a bunch of loan officers and starting to sell loans,” he said. “In that scenario you’re doing everyone a disservice. For me, building from the ground up literally means sitting down, meeting compliance, learning about technology and learning all the different systems – how they work today and how to implement them for retail – and all that good stuff.”
Fiore will also reunite with a former AAG colleague, Kim Smith, who joined Smartfi last year as senior vice president of wholesale lending. Being able to renew an established working relationship will help Fiore’s efforts to build out the new retail division, he said.
As for the addition of a new retail player in the reverse mortgage industry, Fiore said he hopes his colleagues at other companies are excited about the prospect.
“Our future success as an industry depends on new players entering the space and existing players expanding the market with thoughtful, innovative messaging,” he said. “I hope people will take this in a positive way because it has always been my goal to contribute to the industry. I think we all, as leaders, need to think about ways to expand this market. Today the product is more important than ever to the customer base.”
Fiore remains a strong advocate for both the product and his colleagues, he said.
“I advocate and advocate for all my former colleagues to be successful because I think that’s what the industry needs. So the more players, the better,” he explained.
