Reverse mortgage volume leader American Advisors Group on Wednesday formally introduced its new product-agnostic sales model, as the company seeks to evolve into a full-suite “senior home equity solutions brand.”
The messaging update includes what the Orange, Calif.-based company described as a “holistic” approach to sales, with AAG representatives now offering seniors forward and reverse mortgage products — along with real estate brokerage services through its AAG Residential Services arm.
“We completely retooled our business model so that AAG could help more seniors responsibly access their home equity to get better outcomes in retirement,” AAG CEO Reza Jahangiri said in a statement announcing the rollout. “And we’re changing the conversation — and the mindset — around using home equity.”
As RMD reported earlier this week, AAG’s wider push includes a new commercial starring spokesperson Tom Selleck, who appears on the stage of the Theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles and asks seniors to imagine their “better” vision of retirement.
The full product suite will now include Home Equity Conversion Mortgages, proprietary AAG Advantage jumbo reverse mortgages, conventional or Federal Housing Administration-backed refinances, and home sales or relocation services from its brokerage.
“There is no other U.S. company solely focused on helping seniors broadly utilize their home equity to improve their financial outcomes in retirement,” Jahangiri said.
The company — which has logged 6,329 HECMs through the end of June, good enough to keep pace with 2017 and expand its market share in an overall down year for originations — has hinted at this evolution for some time now, with RMD reporting on the real estate brokerage’s website last fall and AAG confirming its forward mortgage plans earlier this year.
“There’s always been a group of clients [for whom] the HECM isn’t the right product, or maybe they don’t have enough equity,” chief retail sales and operations officer Paul Fiore told RMD in February. “A refinance could help them — as opposed to going out and securing a forward mortgage from another traditional mortgage lender that doesn’t specialize in seniors.”
By the company’s own count, AAG records half a million interactions with interested seniors each year, and the new steps look to help the company convert more of those leads to customers.
“We take the time, no matter how long, to understand our customers’ needs and goals,” Fiore said in the statement announcing the rebrand. “At the end of the day, our goal is to help more seniors, and we believe we can do that by giving them a range of options for incorporating home equity into a sustainable retirement plan.”
Written by Alex Spanko
