In September, I was honored to speak at the Texas Reverse Mortgage Day event hosted by the Texas Mortgage Bankers Association. Congratulations to Scott Norman and all the event sponsors and speakers for delivering an informative and entertaining day that was very well-attended.

While my presentation focused on key servicing issues currently facing our industry, I seized the opportunity to ask the attendees whether our industry is selling a product or a service. I ask you to ponder the same question.

I was on the outside looking in on the reverse mortgage industry for five years prior to Peer Advisors acquiring Celink in February 2014. Over those years, I witnessed the industry navigate its way through various program changes and product design modifications.

We are transitioning from a stand-alone, needs-based product to one that is a component of a sound retirement plan and meant for a new type of borrower. This is not a simple task. To be successful, we must not only think differently, we must in fact be different—different products, different partners, different platforms and a different approach. Our opportunity is to evolve from something people need to something people love. This makes me wonder if we put too much emphasis on the HECM product itself and not enough emphasis on the service and resulting benefits we provide our borrowers.

I’m fortunate to receive real stories from Celink’s Borrower Care department every day. A story from our tax and insurance team was brought to my attention recently. Tax and insurance defaults have given the industry a black eye, especially with the media, so I found this particular story very encouraging.

One of our client’s borrowers was in foreclosure for T&I default. He was angry about the greatly depreciated value of his home from the appraisal ordered while he was in foreclosure. After several conversations, our representative persuaded him that the appraisal was not the issue he needed to focus on—the foreclosure was. He was very difficult to get through to, but she eventually got him to focus on the real problem: how he got into foreclosure and how we might help him get out.

This borrower had his reverse mortgage for a few years without a default until his homeowner’s insurance was canceled due to a damaged shed on his property. He wasn’t able to find voluntary coverage or repair the damage in a timely manner. The representative recalled him being very consistent each time they spoke, and especially remembers hearing the desperation in his voice as he expressed how he had planned to be able to take care of his kids and now he could barely provide the essentials for them due to several unforeseen circumstances.

Every story is different, but this borrower had once been quite successful and had waited until he was older to settle down and have children so he could care for them properly. He ended up injuring his back and losing his business. He has school-age children who both have learning disabilities and his wife is also disabled. The reverse mortgage had originally saved him from losing his home, but now that he was in default and in foreclosure, he was not sure what to do.

Our representative reviewed his budget as part of the process to get him on a repayment plan. It was extremely tight because he did not have much disposable income. She referred him to HUD counseling, but he didn’t want to work with them. He was adamant there was no help “out there” for him. But our representative undertook online searches for help in his area. She uncovered local resources that reduced some of his expenses and found a local church that provided clothing and school supplies for his children. She got his budget to a place where we could get him into a repayment plan sufficient to get him out of foreclosure. Through her efforts and persistence, the due and payable notice and foreclosure were rescinded.

If you asked this borrower if a reverse mortgage is a product or service, how would he answer?

Servicers are on the customer satisfaction front line. Servicing operation centers solve multiple issues every minute of every workday. They manage line-of-credit requests, file claims to HUD, oversee repairs, verify occupancy, process prepayments, foreclosures, and due and payables, and manage T&I defaults. Our call center can receive more than 50,000 borrower care calls in a single month. There are approximately 600,000 active reverse mortgages in the market. Servicing reverse mortgages is not like servicing forward mortgages.

Our industry does sell a product, but it’s the solutions we deliver, and the people to whom we deliver them, that set us apart from any other mortgage or financial services business.