Industry-leading reverse mortgage lender Finance of America (FOA) detailed some of its ambitions in appealing to senior borrowers, which includes new TV commercials that feature former American Advisors Group (AAG) turned FOA spokesman Tom Selleck.
During its second-quarter earnings presentation last week, FOA President Kristen Sieffert offered new details about the ways in which FOA will leverage its assets from AAG. This included the assumption of the spokesman deal with the star of “Blue Bloods” and “Magnum P.I.”
Going to market
Coming off its recent brand consolidation under the FOA banner, the company also launched a new corporate website, new ads featuring Selleck, and refreshed social media outreach and multimedia advertising efforts, according to Sieffert.
“In concert with the brand unification, we also developed and introduced a singular company purpose and shared values,” Sieffert said during the earnings call. “This achievement marks a significant step in our evolution, enabling full alignment across the organization to maximize our productivity as a group and realize the full value of our investment.”
The go-to market strategy of the company’s retail lending division was revised and includes stepping away from “strategies that have been less fruitful over time,” she explained. “We expected to see outside returns from this shift and early results are supporting this theory.”
Proprietary products
Sieffert also said that the company is seeing strong demand for its suite of proprietary reverse mortgage products — which operates under the “HomeSafe” brand — in its wholesale channel.
“In Q2, we enhanced the [loan-to-value] of HomeSafe Second to appeal to a wider segment of borrowers and introduced a streamlined underwriting option for high credit-quality customers,” Sieffert said. “In that same period, we experienced a 168% increase in submission volume quarter over quarter and a 30% reduction in average turn times.“
This follows moves made in October 2023 to expand the availability of HomeSafe Second by rolling out the product to an expanded pool of wholesale brokers and direct retail loan officers. Brokers have shown a lot of interest in the product, and FOA aims to direct that inbound interest into more advertising in the coming quarter.
“We will continue to expand the state availability each quarter and plan to launch HomeSafe Second-specific marketing campaigns in our retail channel by the end of Q3,” Sieffert added.
Expansion efforts
Tom Selleck originally became AAG’s spokesman in 2016, the result of a monthslong search following the death of prior spokesman and former Sen. Fred Thompson.
“It’s critical we partner with a spokesperson that older homeowners trust and with whom they feel a connection,” former AAG CEO Reza Jahangiri said at the time.
Following the announcement of AAG’s acquisition by FOA in late 2022, Sieffert told HousingWire‘s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD) that the acquisition of AAG’s marketing apparatus was a key factor in the deal, including the services of Selleck as spokesman.
FOA made a few of its new ads involving Selleck available in materials supplied to its shareholder website. Selleck is featured in three 2-minute commercials, which the company said helps to represent the newly unified brand while “enhancing market visibility and customer recognition.”
Late last month, FOA also posted an infomercial featuring the actor to its YouTube channel. In the same supplement, FOA said that its sentiment analysis of reverse mortgage media coverage has been steadily improving, and that coverage of the company itself skews “neutral to positive.”
In supplemental commentary for its Q2 2024 results, FOA said that July “is the highest funding month and highest submission month” since its acquisition of AAG’s retail assets. It noted that mortgage rate declines are expected to make a difference in Q3 results.
Sieffert also discussed some of the efforts the company is making to expand awareness of its products across the total addressable market, which has traditionally dwarfed the reverse mortgage industry’s broader activities.
“We continue to invest in digital technologies that capitalize on growth opportunities and create tailored experiences for our customers,” Sieffert said. “With the heavy lift of the [loan origination system] and brand transitions behind us, we’re shifting the team’s attention to building out these capabilities as their top priority and look forward to sharing updates around these enhancements as they’re introduced.”
During a Q&A session at the end of the earnings call, Sieffert was asked about loan volumes. She explained that the increased interest the company is seeing has been factored into guidance offered for third-quarter originations.
According to Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) endorsement data compiled by Reverse Market Insight (RMI), FOA is the leading reverse mortgage originator in the country with 6,988 loans endorsed through the 12-month period ending on July 31, 2024. While its HECM volume was down compared to the prior month, proprietary origination data is not included in that figure.
Anecdotally there are stories supposedly coming out of FOA that the due diligence performed by FOA far exceeded the due diligence performed by RMF; how the story tellers know this as fact is not provided. Even if that is the case, was the due diligence performed by FOA superior enough to that performed by RMF to eliminate all substantial concerns about FOA’s ability to withstand the cash flow problems that FOA might encounter from the acquisition of the AAG assets with its related debt? The direct investment of FOA was less than 4% of the total cost of the AAG assets acquired. Over 96% of the investment by FOA comes from its acceptance of debt transferred from AAG as part of the purchase acquisition. That normally leaves a lot to be desired.
One good sign is that there appears to be insufficient concerns by its independent auditors to report any going concern issues. So with the addition of marketing by Tom Selleck do things look like they are turning around at FOA? If investors knew the answer to that question (either way) with a high degree of certainty, there would be a lot of FOA stock activity. Perhaps that will come. For now, many of us are relieved to see the reverse split go so well and are rooting for FOA to turn a profit in both quarters that remain in this calendar year.