Terry Schmidt says Guild is seeing more interest in reverse mortgages
Guild Mortgage CEO Terry Schmidt said Wednesday during a third-quarter earnings call that Guild’s reverse mortgage division continues to contribute to company-wide strategies, and that additional interest in reverse mortgages has been seen.
Guild’s current reverse lending division, built on the 2023 acquisition of Cherry Creek Mortgageexpanded its reverse mortgage business this year. The California-based lender recently introduced a revised branding effort, the ‘Flex Payment Mortgage’ suite, which is designed to broaden the appeal of its reverse offerings to more potential partners.
When asked during the earnings call what the company sees in home lending, Schmidt said the upside opportunities stand out.
“We have a pretty broad product base, and we’ve seen the reverse increase in recent months, so things are moving in the right direction,” she said. “Our second (retention) programs have been very successful, so for those (homeowners) who have equity, we have an option there if rates remain at high levels.”
Schmidt added that Guild is “really focused” on first-time homebuyers and the “homebuyer of the future,” emphasizing the importance of a local presence in communities to capture a piece of the market.
“We think there are many more opportunities and we will continue to focus on that,” she said.
In the past, Schmidt has characterized the company’s involvement in the reverse channel as a key contribution to Guild’s “customer for life” strategy. It wants options that are available for starters, but also offers that suit the age of someone later in life. These include home equity tapping products and reverse mortgages accessible to homeowners age 62 and older through the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program.
“With Cherry Creek, [our interest] was the other way around,” Schmidt said earlier this year during The Gathering by HousingWire. “Now we have a good reverse mortgage department at Guild, and they’re doing really great recruiting there, so we’re learning a lot.”
The reverse channel, she says, offers Guild the opportunity to serve more customers for a longer period of time.
“There is a large portion of those customers who reach that age [a reverse mortgage] could be their next type of transaction,” she said. “Aging and demography [provide] great opportunity. It’s a great product to have, so we see it as a growing niche.”
Jim Cory, director of Guild’s reverse division, previously told HousingWire’s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD) that the company’s overall reverse investment is clearly visible within the division itself.
“The company has made a huge investment in reverse,” Cory said in September. “We manage most of our own loans on both the traditional side and the back end. ‘Customer for life’ is something Guild talks about a lot, even before this reverse format was added, and this is a perfect combination [to earn the business] from a customer for life.”
The inclusion of reverse is essential to this business strategy, he added.
“I always like to say that you can’t really present a ‘customer for life’ if you don’t have a reverse mortgage offer,” Cory explains. “Our division fits in perfectly with this. And our marketing team is world-class and does all kinds of great things, and we’re just now starting to leverage that with reverse mortgages.”
