In early 2024, a mortgage technology company LoanPASS has been announced as the reverse mortgage lender’s technology partner Smartfi Home Loans. The lender selected LoanPASS to provide its software-as-a-service (SaaS) product and pricing engine for its reverse lending operations.
This partnership has been fruitful, according to Bill Mitchell, chief revenue officer at LoanPASS. Mitchell, who has mortgage industry experience in the loan origination system (LOS) space, sat down with HousingWire‘s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD) to talk about the market opportunity he sees and where he hopes the industry can go from here.
Getting the hang of reverse
Mitchell is a 25-year veteran of the real estate technology space, working for LOS companies. In late 2021, Mitchell was hired by the parent company of reverse LOS ReverseVision (RV) and Joe Langner, its leader at the time. Soon after, the company was acquired by Constellation Software.
During Mitchell’s six months working around the RV, he described it as “a great time” and became more familiar with the RV industry. He noted its flexibility and differences from the traditional forward mortgage.
“If you think about it, we had all of the top 10, if not 25 reverse lenders,” Mitchell said of RV’s title at the time. “I spent the first three to six months talking to CEOs, CTOs and these companies about their businesses, and I learned a lot about it. It was a great time in my career to go through that, and I wish it had been longer. “
But it ended up being more valuable than he expected, because it turned off a “light bulb” in his mind about what else could be done in the space.
“It showed me that there is a good opportunity here in technology but also in the industry as a whole,” he said.
Steps to dissolve a partnership
Mitchell credits his time in RV with showing how to solve potential shortcomings in existing cross-technology stacks.
After joining LoanPASS in 2022 in its newly created CRO position, he began discussions with the company about joint tools that would allow lenders to better understand the potential benefits of adding reverse mortgages to their product suites.
“I told them that it would be very good if we could stand up and go back, so that lenders who want to open these channels in the future can do so,” he said. That way, they don’t have to push someone later in life into a HELOC or another product that might not be a good fit for them.”
Mitchell said work started quickly, and the company quickly began to cultivate customers. Opening that line of business, Mitchell met with Gregg Smith, Smartfi’s CEO, and they spent the next few months talking about how LoanPASS could fit into Smartfi’s reverse lending ambitions.
“If you think about it fundamentally, where the technology needs to do this, it’s been a pretty good three or four month conversation,” he said. “And then we got deeper into it and put together a formal relationship.”
What does the future hold?
The LoanPass-Smartfi partnership was announced publicly in January 2024. Since then, further discussions have taken place, including several meetings this year. Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) Annual Conference and Exhibition in Denver.
Mitchell said the partnership has been going well for most of the past year, helped by both parties’ focus on what he calls a “bigger road map.”
“If you think about the idea of having modern technology that enables them to stop quickly, bring this [reverse-specific] statistics – the main limiting factor, non-borrowing partners, all the things that legacy software does not have today – when it comes to decision-making technology, we have that,” he said.
This is where the education and discussions with Smartfi begin, and the companies are interested in where the deal will go, explains Mitchell.
“Now they’re using our open APIs with their other applications so that data can flow through their operations upstream, downstream and so on,” he said.
But the barrier to adoption continues to be a long-standing obstacle the mortgage industry has faced, Mitchell said. This does not deter him, and he continues to think that the industry offers a product that many loan companies should take a closer look at.
“I think all lenders should look at it as a consideration,” he said. “A very good product. I approach it every year, and I can say that the technology that exists today makes it easier for those lenders who want to take that next step.”
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