OneWest Bank Chief Executive Officer Terry Laughlin is stepping down to join Bank of America Corp., where he’ll replace mortgage executive Jack Schakett.
Laughlin announced his resignation from the Pasadena, California-based OneWest on June 21 and will stay with the bank through the end of July, according to spokeswoman Diane Henry.

The competition between reverse mortgage lenders continues with MetLife’s decision to roll out produt changes late last week.
The company introduced a “HECM Fixed No Service Fee 2″, which improved pricing on their fixed rate product to compete with the 100% Mortgage Insurance Premium credit from Bank of America.

Financial Freedom announced to wholesale customers that it has enhanced its HECM Fixed Rate product by offering a lender paid credit to borrower closing costs on all refinance transactions.  The new product will be available starting June 3, 2010 and was designed to maximize flexibility for loan originators and provide better tools to capture interested reverse [...]

New View Advisors has added Jim Mahoney to its staff.  Based in New York, the company is a financial services firm advising clients on capital markets, product development, mergers and acquisitions, and asset investment strategies in the reverse mortgage industry.
Prior to joining New View, Mahoney was a founding partner of Financial Freedom Senior Funding Corporation’s predecessor [...]

Financial Freedom’s servicer rating has been upgraded to ‘RPS3′ from ‘RPS3-’ said a statement from Fitch Ratings.
A subsidiary of One West Bank, FSB, Financial Freedom is a reverse mortgage lender headquartered in Irvine, CA and conducts its servicing operations from Austin, TX, Kalamazoo, MI and Norcross, GA. As of Dec. 31, 2009, [...]

Financial Freedom announced to correspondents on Friday that it’s rolling out the lowest fixed rate reverse mortgage product in the industry. Starting immediately, the company is offering a fixed rate HECM at 5.39% which “will save your borrowers thousands of dollars over the life of the loan” said Financial Freedom in a notice to brokers.
The [...]

Wholesale reverse mortgage volume totaled 4,450 units in January 2010, up 2.9% from the previous month according to data from Reverse Market Insight.
While wholesale volume was up from the previous month, units are down 15% compared to January 2009. Below is the top 5 wholesalers for January 2010.