The reverse mortgage industry was represented before Consumer Financial Protection Bureau staff including White House Special Advisor Elizabeth Warren on Friday, by National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association executives Peter Bell and Steve Irwin.

The meeting served as an opportunity to discuss reverse mortgage issues and an upcoming report the Bureau will submit to Congress on reverse mortgages that has been mandated by Congress under Dodd-Frank, according to NRMLA. The report is to be submitted within one year of the Bureau’s launch on July 21 of this year.

One the launch takes place, the report research will examine reverse mortgages and will address whether the safeguards in place are adequate as they are, or need to be strengthened.

“For an initial meeting, I thought the discussion went very well,” said Bell. “They have a good team in place, comprised of  knowledgeable individuals with a deep experience working with lenders and law firms representing lenders. We support the CFPB’s efforts to review the reverse mortgage market. This is an important opportunity to get out the facts and evidence about what is happening in our business, and progress beyond the rhetoric voiced by under-informed critics.”

Additional topics in the discussion included the mortgage disclosure forms that the CFPB is working to revamp, NRMLA said. The CFPB released two drafts of disclosure forms in May and opened the floor for comment on the new versions. Bell and Irwin expressed the difficulty in fitting reverse mortgages into a format that is designed for forward mortgages, and encouraged the development of a reverse-specific form, NRMLA said.

The discussions between NRMLA and the CFPB will continue as the reverse mortgage assessment and report is conducted and produced by the CFPB.

Written by Elizabeth Ecker