Your Loan Officer Does Not Work For You

It’s important for seniors to know that your loan officer is not an agent.  In other words, your loan officer does not have a fiduciary responsibility to provide you with all the information available – bad and good – about the mortgage deal you are contemplating.  Unlike a real estate person that you might hire to sell your home, the loan officer is not working for you. He/she is working for the lender and the responsibility is to the lending institution or to the broker’s owners and shareholders.

Opinion

Please understand, we are not trying to provide legal advice here and we certainly do not claim expertise with respect to agency law. We are speaking in general terms about the role of the loan officer.

A good loan officer will work hard to earn your trust and should be totally honest and straightforward with you at all times.  Fortunately, most in the profession who have been well trained and also have some experience originating Reverse Mortgage are very careful to disclose everything to you.

Finding a good Reverse Mortgage Specialist

We suggest you look for indiviuals wiith a long history in the reverse mortgage business (5 years or more – that’s a long time in reverse mortgage terms).  One of the first questions you should ask is “How long have you been doing reverse mortgage loans?”  Listen very carefully to how that question is answered. If the response is “Well, I’ve been doing mortgages for 25 years” – let me remind you that wasn’t your question. It’s an evasive answer.  You loan officer might have been doing sub-prime loans or commercial real estate deals for all of that time… and entered the reverse mortgage industry last week.  Believe me, prior mortgage experience in any other field except reverse mortgages is not useful.

Certified

The paperwork for a Reverse Mortgage can be overwhelming. You want to deal with somebody that subscribes to a code of ethics & standards – perhaps a certificated professional like a CSA (Certified Senior Advisor) or CFP (Certified Financial Planner).  You want to be confident that all the disclosures you sign and all the paperwork is fully explained to you.  An experienced professional loan officer will not hurry you through and will explain every document put in front of you…fully.  Pay close attention to who you pick for a loan officer – this might be more important than other issues seniors focus on.  Certification is not necessarilly evidence of honesty or expertise but it indicates a level of professionalism. These groups also publish Standards & Ethics and remove members who violate them.

Author – Robert H. Irving, CSA
Senior Reverse Mortgage Consultant

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