A Pledge to Reverse Mortgage Borrowers

By Peter Bell

At our meeting in Washington, DC the first week of March, NRMLA’s Board of Directors voted unanimously to implement signing and abiding by the Pledge to Reverse Mortgage Borrowers as a requirement for association membership.  This was a reaffirmation of the viewpoint of the committee of members that worked on writing the Pledge.

The Pledge is the anchor of the Borrow with Confidence campaign, a national effort that we are about to launch created to provide another and even higher level of assurance to America’s seniors that their best interest is our priority.  Its 19 points promise integrity and clarity throughout the reverse mortgage experience.

Why do we need to provide this additional assurance at this time?  Well, all you have to do is read last week’s jolt from within the financial services industry: Greg Smith’s Op Ed in the March 14 New York Times about quitting Goldman Sachs because, as he writes, “it makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off.”  Suspicion about financial service providers is rampant in the press and the public, and with inappropriate home mortgages pinpointed as the cause of our nation’s recession, it can be hard to argue.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t try to distinguish our business from the other sectors of financial services.  And if this effort is going to be taken seriously, we need to prove that we’re different to back up our claim.

The best evidence we can provide is the most transparency and the fewest surprises for consumers—which are the precisely the goals of Borrow with Confidence.

In addition to the Pledge, our initial Borrow with Confidence effort includes a  Road Map to Reverse Mortgages, which is a step-by-step guide through the loan process.  As an addendum to the Road Map, we have created a tool of advice for children of reverse mortgage borrowers called Should My Mom and Dad Get a Reverse Mortgage? And all of these tools are available and easily findable to consumers on the newly designed reversemortgage.org website.

These tools have been created with input from lenders, originators, servicers, closing agents and counselors all across the country and reviewed before release by our Executive Committee and our Board.  And we are grateful to all of you who contributed.  But despite all the thought and experience that went into them, they will only be trusted if adhered to with unanimity.  One bad egg can ruin the taste of the whole soufflé. We cannot settle for anything less than a 100% buy in to these principles from those who choose to affiliate with NRMLA--which is why a written commitment to the Pledge is from here on in a requirement for membership of the organization.