The Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO) on Thursday issued a call for participants to join a new development workgroup (DWG) focused on analyzing and developing standards for reverse mortgages.
“Given the current interest rate environment and demographic trends, there is potential for increased borrower demand for reverse mortgages and a subsequent need for standardization,” said David Coleman, MISMO president. “Developing and leveraging MISMO standards for the reverse mortgage industry will serve as an opportunity to mainstream programs, which at times can be seen as niche.”
The new Reverse Lending DWG initially will focus on a discovery phase, in which they will:
- Identify and recruit key participants for the workgroup;
- Begin to analyze reverse mortgage use cases;
- Establish initial priorities and a preliminary plan for evaluating potential deliverables; and
- Evaluate existing MISMO products to identify those that could/should be enhanced to support reverse mortgages.
MISMO said key drivers for this initiative include:
- The need for holistic support for reverse mortgage programs for new and existing MISMO subscribers.
- Standardizing data in an industry-standard format (with data definitions) that can be easily and consistently transferred between all parties involved in the reverse mortgage lifecycle to increase efficiency among stakeholders.
- Expanding the use of the MISMO standard to additional lenders, vendors, and technology providers specializing in reverse mortgages with structured datasets.
- Creating efficiencies for existing MISMO members who originate both forward and reverse mortgages, and
- Expanding the universe of organizations that can use the reverse mortgage assets that require specialists at various vendors to exchange and evaluate the data.
Industry support is necessary to ensure that all relevant needs are considered and to confirm that key activities are identified, addressed, and incorporated into the Reverse Mortgage Roadmap, MISMO said.
The Reverse Mortgage DWG will conduct regular meetings via conference calls. When the roadmap is completed, subsequent phases may be arranged to begin working on the identified priorities established by the DWG.
Anyone interested in participating in the group and who is already a MISMO member may join the collaboration site that has been established on MISMO connect. Non-members of MISMO should contact [email protected].
