The Top 10 Reverse Mortgage Lenders of 2024

2024 is in the rearview mirror, and with many reverse mortgage lending professionals citing interest rates as the top challenge for the year, the performance metrics seem to bear this out.

Total annual Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) volume in the reverse mortgage industry saw a decline, but there was some movement among the leading players on the industry leaderboard for the top 10. Federal Housing Administration (FHA) approved HECM recommendations in retail. The data was from January to December composed Through Reverse market insight (RMI).

New winner

The biggest difference with last year’s rankings is that Mutuality of Omaha Mortgage caught up Finance of America (FOA) as the nation’s largest private mortgage lender, according to RMI data. The companies were separated by 203 HECM recommendations recorded between January and December.

RMI data shows that FOA’s total approval volume was down approximately 25% compared to 2023, but this data is missing its own private-label reverse mortgage origination volume. FOA has been heavily promoting its “HomeSafe Second” product for the better part of the last two years, since it relaunched the product after a hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic.

FOA also announced changes to HomeSafe Second late last year, including a reduction in interest rates from 9.99% to 9.49%, as well as a rollout to four new states: Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Utah, with more apparently planned for 2025.

Mutual of Omaha, meanwhile, had an eventful year in terms of volume growth of 12% from 2023. In 2024, the company launched a new broker protection program and will remain involved in the Longevity Financing Task Force which was reforged in April 2024.

But the company was also named in a lawsuit filed against the company by another leading lender, Longbridge financial. Mutual of Omaha is alleged to have engaged in deceptive marketing practices based on review websites that Longbridge said are owned by Mutual of Omaha.

The company has not yet responded to the allegations, but the deadline for a response is later this month, and court filings show the companies are trying to reach a settlement.

Other movements

Based on the data, companies ranked third through fifth retained their positions in the rankings as of 2023. Longbridge parent company Ellington financial consistently praised the reverse lender’s performance despite market turbulence, especially with its own reverse mortgage securitization business.

Liberty Reverse Mortgage‘s parent company completed a rebrand to improve the Onity groupwhich is expected to apply to Liberty itself in the coming months. And the company reported improved reverse mortgage utilization in 2024, even as it faced headwinds impacting the forward and reverse mortgage spaces.

Early 2024, Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp. rejoined the National Association of Reverse Mortgage Lenders (NRMLA) after previous leadership left the association in 2021. Fairway also reshaped its reverse mortgage division with a new leadership structure, and saw a key reverse representative join NRMLA’s board of directors.

Further down the top 10, South River Mortgage experienced a notable year-over-year volume spike in 2024 due to the transition from broker to direct lender in December 2023. South River saw a 319% year-over-year increase in approval volume in 2024, according to RMI data. The president of the company spoke to HousingWire‘s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD) last year on some of its guiding business principles.

Despite Cherry Creek Mortgage And Guild Mortgage Guild separately appeared in the top 10 of the 2023 rankings and acquired Cherry Creek that year, thanks in no small part to its reverse mortgage division, Guild CEO Terry Schmidt said.

The top 10 in 2024 was completed HighTechLendingthat renamed its wholesale channel US senior loans after reverse mortgage industry executive David Peskin bought an ownership stake in the company early last year. According to RMI, HighTech grew its approval volume by 6% year over year.

The only company not returning to the rankings in some form this year is Open a mortgagewhich shuttered its reverse mortgage division at the end of 2023, before shifting its focus entirely to third-party forward originations in August 2024.