CMG Home Loans, the retail lending division of CMG Financial, recently made a key hire in its reverse mortgage division by adding industry veteran Kari Van Kleef as its operations manager. The move comes as the company broadens its ambitions for the reverse mortgage division, aiming to put its 1,400 traditional mortgage originators to work by adding reverse lending to their repertoire.

To get a better idea of what the division hopes to accomplish in the future, HousingWire’s Reverse Mortgage Daily sat down with Sean Kirksey, vice president of reverse mortgage at CMG Home Loans.

Growing the business

During the first seven months of this year, CMG has seen a 500% yearly increase in its Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) volume. According to data from Reverse Market Insight (RMI), CMG originated 72 HECM loans during the first seven months of 2024 compared to 12 during the same period last year.

When asked about CMG’s recent growth, Kirksey said it largely comes down to two core components: distribution and additional reverse mortgage investments by the company.

“I joined the company about two years ago and we built a reverse division at that time. We built out an operations group, switched over and made arrangements with a couple of different investors so we could lend in our name,” Kirksey said. 

The construction of the division was largely from scratch, Kirksey explained, and its first in-house reverse mortgage was accomplished about 18 months ago.

“Since then, with the exception of one or two months, we’ve funded a few more loans every month,” he said. “It’s been very organic growth and we’re just continuing along that organic path.”

The addition of Van Kleef to the staff marks a big moment for the division, he said. There is now capability to generate reverse mortgage leads in excess of what the company could do without a dedicated operations manager, but there wouldn’t be much point of doing that without someone like Van Kleef to accommodate them.

“Kari is important to us because the biggest competitive advantage we can have in the reverse space is operational efficiency,” Kirksey said. “We can close these loans in less than 20 days — which we typically do — but do it at scale. It gives us a really good opportunity to grow the business.”

Impact of dedicated operations

When asked about how the addition of Van Kleef changes the growth equation for the CMG reverse division into next year, Kirksey said it would have a major impact particularly due to how the division’s business model is built.

“At the end of the day, operational efficiencies have to be the foundation. We need to have that in place because the majority of our business model is built on referrals,” he said. “We can’t risk taking in too many loans that we’re not able to process efficiently, as that could damage those relationships.”

But with a new operations head also comes a need to build out the broader team that will be working with her, and that process takes time.

“Now that we have Kari in place, we don’t expect her to flip a switch and suddenly have a massive operational team,” he said. “We’re still a pretty small team right now, but she’s going to help us grow that out. She’ll help with forecasting so we can start doing things beyond just organic business.

“Right now, it’s all organic, but we’re prepared to start direct-to-consumer marketing and get more involved in that arena. However, the operational foundation has to be solid first.”

Reverse specialization, sales structure

In terms of where CMG falls in the ongoing debate between reverse specialization and broadening the “umbrella” to more traditional loan originators, Kirksey said that the division has room for both approaches.

“We’ve built out a certification program that takes about 13 hours, which allows a forward loan officer who’s never done reverse mortgages before to become authorized to originate them here at CMG,” he said.

“Once they complete that certification, we also partner them with what we call a ‘reverse mortgage guru.’ This is the experienced person you’re referring to — someone who’s been in the business for a long time and has done the sales.”

Pairing the traditional LO with a “guru” for their first few reverse transactions also allows the industry veteran to offer insight on unique software, relations with reverse mortgage borrowers and understanding some of the unique, reverse-specific nuances they may not have encountered on the forward side of the business, Kirksey said.

“Whether they’re call-center producers, field producers or dabbling in both, we want to have a platform for everyone,” he said. “Recently, we’ve hired Peter Klamkin, who is running the eastern United States from Texas eastward, and Gina Larson, our sales manager for the West. Both are working with loan officers who recently joined us, and they collaborate with all our certified people in the field. The people they recruit are reverse-only, so we’re really trying to cover all angles.”

But speed has to take a back seat to ethical and compliant origination, he said.

“We’ve built in a lot of safety nets in our process, so a forward loan officer can originate without creating any regulatory or reputational risks because we have a whole support team to help them.”