From his favorite vacation and his first job to his thoughts about the future of the reverse mortgage market, we get the personal and professional facts from Colin Cushman, president and CEO of Generation Mortgage Company, in our monthly edition of The Hot Seat.
You can’t always be an extrovert.
Ten years from now I will be trying to parent two teenage boys.
Something nobody knows about me is that I can speak, read and write Thai.
My favorite vacation was backpacking around the world with my wife for 11 months.
If I were a professional athlete I would be a first baseman for the Red Sox.
My first car was an old two-tone green Lincoln Continental.
The craziest thing I’ve ever done was the world’s highest bungee jump from a bridge in South Africa.
If I could meet anyone, past or present, it would be my grandfather, who was a self-made businessman and who died before I was born.
My favorite website is economist.com.
When
I was younger I wanted to be a professional baseball player.
Every morning I get woken up by my 3-year-old son.
I can’t go without flip-flops.
When I was a kid I practiced boxing for months with my dad to execute a plan to beat up the town bully.
I’ll never forget scoring the winning goal in overtime to win the state championship during my senior year of high school.
My first job was working on an assembly line, adding coupon inserts into newspapers.
My parents taught me how to see the world through multiple lenses and to truly believe that anything is possible.
My favorite time of the day is breakfast with my boys.
I’ve never failed to deliver on a promise.
The best lesson I’ve ever learned was from my dad, who taught me to be humble, hungry and curious at the same time.
My favorite book is The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman.
The biggest challenge in the reverse mortgage industry is moving beyond the public perception that a reverse mortgage is only for seniors in desperate circumstances to one where the product is seen as a smart retirement planning tool.
The future of reverse mortgages is absolutely terrific. Approximately 80 percent of seniors say they want to age in place, and about half are considering using their home equity to help fund retirement. At this point, there are 24 million households with residents age 62 or older, and half of those hold more than 50 percent of their net worth in home equity. In short, the market is enormous, and the future is ours.
The most fascinating thing about the reverse mortgage industry is the wide range of options we have to help seniors age in place.
Before I entered the reverse mortgage industry I was the director of Portfolio Analysis at FHA, responsible for developing valuation models to support product development, premium pricing, risk management and operations. In that role, I led the design and creation of the FHA HECM Standard and Saver products, and helped shape all policy guidance on the HECM program.
The most important influence technology will have on reverse mortgages is providing transparency for prospective borrowers and financial planners to understand the multiple options available for retirement planning. Our nu62 iPad application is an example.
