Having just made the switch from Financial Freedom to MetLife I have to say that MetLife has been wonderful to work with. I've been with Financial Freedom almost 9 years and this past year has been the worst experience in my life. We had 21 Business Days for a turn time just to get your file looked at in underwriting. Then Conditions Clearing took at least 2 weeks. By the time you got to closing your credit report, comps on appraisal, payoffs and title searches had expired and all had to be re-done. Not to mention their SRP had shrunk to practically nothing. My customer account rep was always rude and talked to me like I was stupid and was always quoting "Company Policy" to me.
I say good ridance. They were always such a great company to work with and they still have some good folks there, but overall its a very stressful experience getting a loan closed with them.
MetLife has been courteous and helpful on the phone and their Conditions Clearing department is a "breeze" compared to FF. I for one am thrilled to have made the change and happy they are doing well. 5 of those MetLife loans they closed were mine and I'm damn happy about it.

Wholesale reverse mortgage lending has declined further than direct retail lending, repeating the pattern that manifests itself in the forward mortgage sector: Small-business mortgage brokers are being excluded from the marketplace. In the second half of this year alone, our small firm has lost three reverse mortgage loan officers to the large banks, who assign them branches that feed them leads and offer a salary and benefits that we cannot afford to provide.

I resent that my tax dollars have been used to bail out the large banks, who are using their newly-found capital to achieve hegemony in the marketplace and drive firms like mine out of business.

Who else has a competative fixed rate product ?

Still interested in knowing what others consider the top 5 companies in terms of customer service ?

ReversePro,

Please list them.

This is just residual of MetLife taking 3-4 months to close loans. The majority of this business finally closing is when everyone was sending them business because they were the only option. It will be interesting to see how they fair now that there are other lenders in the market offering the low fixed. They have lost me as a customer as they had no respect or regard for thier business partners while business was good. Now they will be paying for it. Good luck to them and it only reminded me of the horrendous processing days of BNY when nothing could get done. I had an AE who I wasn't sure if she existed. No help, no assistance, and occasionally we would get an email apologizing for thier troubles. It's not a tough job getting business when you are the only one's in town. Now will be the true test.

It is interesting to see these figures. MetLife really took a strong stake in the market when it stressed its fixed rate product. Bank of America has finally followed suit. Long-term these will no doubt be the principal reverse mortgage wholesale leaders.

Financial Freedom is not as surprising as one might first think. Many expected FF management to bring it down; however, as in prior years, FF has tackled risk issues others have not. FF is particularly aggressive in getting into new types of properties and property transactons and this is very healthy for FF as well as the industry. In the mid part of this decade, their willingness to provide Homekeepers to coops in a large senior community in Laguna Woods, CA, was a godsend to many coop owners.