Reverse mortgage industry veteran George Morales has been appointed as the new chairperson of the dedicated reverse mortgage development workgroup (DWG) inside the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization. MISMO is a subsidiary of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), which signaled its intent for more reverse mortgage involvement late last year.
The reverse mortgage workgroup, which was announced last year, aims to help make the reverse mortgage product category more of a “mainstream” financial instrument by initially identifying a need for holistic support for reverse programs across new and existing MISMO subscribers, as well as publishing data in an industry-standard format to increase efficiency among stakeholders.
To get a better idea of what he hopes to accomplish in his new role, as well as the goals of the group, Morales sat down with HousingWire’s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD) to discuss the development.
Overarching mission
Morales explained that the overarching goal of the group lies in the development of a MISMO reverse mortgage reference model, along with the convening of different work products to provide holistic support for reverse mortgage professionals.
“This reverse mortgage reference model would go a long way to ‘mainstream’ the reverse mortgage products — which are often seen as niche — by providing opportunities for systems, data and documents in an industry-standard format (with data definitions), to be easily and consistently exchanged between all parties involved in the lending life cycle by both forward and reverse mortgage lenders, vendors and other third parties,” Morales said.
He sees this broader effort as a way to both expand reverse mortgage product adoption and remove existing barriers for players that may want to incorporate reverse mortgages into their product mix, he explained.
“[The work can do this] by utilizing an industry standard that for the first time includes reverse mortgage data points,” he said. “I’m a true believer in the aphorism, ‘A rising tide lifts all boats,’ and I expect these efforts to be good for all parties.”
Rigorous work
Morales explained that he has been involved in the MISMO DWG from its inception, and that he and others serving on it have been working hard to push its plans forward.
“We meet every two weeks and are compiling all the data that anyone in the mortgage industry would need to speak the reverse mortgage language,” Morales said. “From a data standpoint, we’ve been building a reverse mortgage dataset that uses the MISMO standard.”
Several industry and industry-adjacent companies in the reverse mortgage sector are involved, including providers of loan origination systems (LOS). Some leadership changes have taken place, and when a vacancy emerged in the chairperson’s role, Morales was asked if he would be willing to be nominated for the position.
“I accepted the nomination,” he said. “We then went through the MISMO process of nomination, voting and confirmation. They have their own internal process, and we completed that. As of July 1, I am now the chair for the reverse mortgage work group.”
Speaking the language
The reverse mortgage industry is often seen from the outside — and by forward mortgage professionals — as having several barriers to entry, including the language that the industry employs. While there are similarities with the way forward mortgages are discussed, there are also a lot of key differences that may prove challenging for the uninitiated to learn.
But there’s also often more to it, Morales said.
“Part of that is the way the data looks, or the lack of data available to anyone who would like to kick the tires on reverse mortgages or make a genuine effort to enter the reverse space,” he said. “Creating a MISMO standard that includes reverse mortgages will help in mainstreaming the reverse mortgage product. It will enable us to bring it to forward mortgage companies, third-party vendors and organizations that interact in the mortgage world, allowing for the exchange of reverse mortgage information between systems.”
A side effect that is hoped for from that unified standard is that reverse mortgage distribution can be improved, he added.
“We want to distribute the product as far as we can and move away from the siloed approach to data with reverse mortgages, where the data is separated from the rest of the mortgage base,” he explained. “We want to integrate that data into the MISMO standard to see adoption by the entire mortgage industry increase, thereby helping with all the life cycles of reverse mortgages for both forward and reverse mortgage lenders, vendors and other third parties.”
Next on the list is actually parsing out the data points the group has cultivated to progress further in the development of a standard, he said. As of now, the group is targeting the publication of a standard in 2025, which Morales hopes “will mark the beginning of the opportunity for many people to finally access the reverse mortgage data they need to enter the industry.”
