It’s often said that to better serve your customers, you need to learn more about them. Luckily, a new survey of HECM counselees offers a great deal of insight into the profile of those who consider reverse mortgage loans.

Conducted by researchers at The Ohio State University, the survey polled seniors who participated in HECM counseling, asking questions about their motivations, experiences and financial status to learn more about how reverse mortgages can impact borrowers.

The survey is part of a larger study of reverse mortgage borrowers titled “Aging in Place: Analyzing the Use of Reverse Mortgages to Preserve Independent Living.” Led by seven Ohio State researchers in partnership with ClearPoint Credit Counseling Solutions, and funded by grants from HUD and the MacArthur Foundation, the study seeks to gain a better understanding of the connection between reverse mortgages and the financial security, well-being and independence of older adults.

“We knew the baby boomer generation was retiring in droves and we also knew that a lot of them had mortgage debt,” says Ohio State professor Stephanie Moulton, who is spearheading the study. “You’ve got this double-edged sword, where equity is the primary asset, but a lot of seniors are using that asset in retirement. We wanted to better understand how the reverse mortgage fit into that puzzle of trying to make ends meet in retirement. Do they help reduce some of the burden for seniors, and under what conditions does that occur?”

As part of its effort to achieve this goal, the team launched a survey of potential borrowers, ultimately collecting responses from 1,761 seniors who received HECM counseling from ClearPoint from January 2014 through July 2015.

The data revealed that the average counselee was 70 years old and about one-third were single women. The average annual income was $31,000, or $2,600 per month, and 46 percent of respondents claimed to have no assets at the time of counseling aside from their home.

The results gathered information from three sets of counselees: those who opted not to take a reverse mortgage, those who took a reverse mortgage and retained the loan, and those who moved forward with the loan and then terminated.

Moulton says the inclusion of former HECM borrowers is particularly interesting. “This is a new group that hasn’t been looked at much before—the people who have terminated their reverse mortgages and are still alive. One hundred of them participated in the survey,” says Moulton, adding that respondents were polled an average of four and a half years after they received counseling. “We found it interesting that people who had terminated their reverse mortgage and were still alive were by and large reporting that they were satisfied with that decision and said it improved the quality of their life.”

According to Moulton, another interesting revelation was the fact that one of the main reasons borrowers were seeking the loan was to pay off an existing mortgage.

“I don’t think that’s talked about as much,” she says. “Even though they are taking a lot of money out up front, it’s not necessarily being used to go to Tahiti; it’s being used to pay off a mortgage. We were seeing that in the credit data, and the survey confirmed that that is a big motivation for a lot of folks.”

Moulton says the data has helped HUD shape recent policy changes. “We started five years ago, before Financial Assessment and the limits on initial withdraw, so we were able to provide research that informed HUD on some of the characteristics of individuals in the reverse mortgage program.”

The team is continuing to collect and assess data as part of the larger Aging in Place study, aiming to determine how reverse mortgage borrowers fare over time.

“We are using credit and loan data to see how borrowers are faring with the loan, comparing them to consumers who didn’t get a reverse. We’re also looking at consumers who are extracting equity through other means, and analyzing how their credit profiles changed compared with the profiles of reverse mortgage borrowers,” adds Moulton, who says she hopes to release early results by the end of the year.