RMS Sees Growth In Reverse Servicing.

Spring, TX -- With the baby boom generation starting to enter retirement, the business of making reverse mortgages is entering a growth phase.

The baby boomers, more comfortable than earlier generations taking out debt, make for prime Home Equity Conversion Mortgage customers. And plenty of lenders are lining up to serve this market.

The problem is, many don't have the wherewithal to service reverse mortgages, with their complicated draw options, payback scenarios and special clientele.

Reverse Mortgage Solutions here believes it can help. The company offers to subservice reverse mortgages for lenders that want to get into the game and maintain ownership of the customer relationship but don't want to actually manage administration of reverse mortgages internally.

Marc Helm, chief operating officer of Reverse Mortgage Solutions, said the baby boom generation is less self-conscious about debt and more sophisticated about managing finances. With the help of things like a reverse mortgage, which essentially turns the equity into their homes into an annuity to supplement their income, they can maximize their retirement income.

Most of the reverse mortgage lending being done today comes through the Federal Housing Administration's Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program, which has a $250,000 loan cap, though some legislators want to raise the maximum. There's also a private reverse mortgage market, though growth of non-government-insured HECM lending has been stunted by Wall Street's lack of interest in new mortgage products in the current economic environment.

As a servicer, he said RMS has the benefit of having staff who helped build the master servicing system used by HUD for the FHA program. RMS has created its own proprietary technology for administering reverse mortgage loans.