When Live Well Financial abruptly shuttered operations earlier this month, approximately 100 of the company’s employees were suddenly left without a job.
But thanks to Open Mortgage, about half of those folks won’t be out of a job for long.
Open Mortgage, an Austin, Texas-based lender that operates forward and reverse mortgage operations, announced Thursday that is hiring approximately 50 of Live Well Financial’s former employees, including three of the company’s top executives.
Live Well Financial’s executive vice president, Bruce Barnes; senior vice president of operations, Jim Cory; and senior vice president of wholesale and correspondent lending, Joshua Moran; are all joining Open Mortgage.
Additionally, approximately 50 of Live Well’s former sales and operations employees are joining Open Mortgage to expand the company’s retail, wholesale, principal agent, and closed loan seller mortgage channels.
This marks the second expansion for Open Mortgage in just the last two weeks. Earlier this month, Open Mortgage acquired Premier Home Mortgage, a South Dakota-based lender that specializes in financing for rural and small-town homes.
At the time, Open said that deal would add new markets to the company’s footprint by bringing offices in Iowa, Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Open Mortgage was founded in 2003 and has operation centers in Austin and Atlanta to support its 79 branches in 22 states. The forward and reverse lender said it originated nearly $1 billion in mortgages last year.
The company also has a growing reverse mortgage business, recently coming in the No. 10 slot on the Top 100 HECM lenders list. And last year, the company said that it plans to continue growing its reverse mortgage business.
Live Well was also one of top players in the reverse mortgage space, and Open Mortgage Founder and CEO Scott Gordon said that Live Well’s reverse mortgage business was a big draw.
“As a top reverse mortgage lender, Live Well Financial’s team has unparalleled industry expertise in all phases of reverse mortgages and a love of technology, just like us,” Gordon said. “We are expanding the Open Mortgage family and gaining some of the brightest folks in our industry.”
Barnes said that he is excited to bring Live Well’s experience to Open Mortgage.
“We are looking forward to further advancing Open Mortgage as a leading retail, wholesale, principal agent and close loan buyer of reverse mortgages,” Barnes said. “Since joining Live Well in 2014, we built an industry leading reverse mortgage platform funding over $5 billion in reverse loan volume. Our plan is to do this again only bigger and better.”
