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“The only thing constant in life is change”. This rings true for our industry. Are all the recent changes overwhelming at times? A quick look at 9 ways we can better understand what may come and accept what is.
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Editor in Chief: HECMWorld.com
As a prominent commentator and Editor in Chief at HECMWorld.com, Shannon Hicks has played a pivotal role in reshaping the conversation around reverse mortgages. His unique perspectives and deep understanding of the industry have not only educated countless readers but has also contributed to introducing practical strategies utilizing housing wealth with a reverse mortgage.
Shannon’s journey into the world of reverse mortgages began in 2002 as an originator and his prior work in the financial services industry. Shannon has been covering reverse mortgage news stories since 2008 when he launched the podcast HECMWorld Weekly. Later, in 2010 he began producing the weekly video series The Industry Leader Update and Friday’s Food for Thought.
Readers wishing to submit stories or interview requests can reach our team at: info@hecmworld.com.
3 Comments
Great insight for those of us who have chosen to make this our entire focus and not just dabble in a product that changes so many lives. Thanks so much for the positives you bring each week.
You are most welcome Bill. We have so much promise and potential in our industry. It is up to us to see it through to becoming our destiny! Happy Friday.
As professionals we should take change in stride but the real issue is how do we present change on what a customer already knows so that the customer will not overact? Change tests our professional character.
The problem many of us face is not how change impacts us but rather it is their impact on our customer base. They learned about reverse mortgages four years or months ago and do not want change to occur. For example, I have a gentleman who has been calling me for the last three years almost every month. He will refinance if we will provide a CMT index. He got his first HECM with a CMT index and does not want to go to LIBOR.
As a second career, this industry seems to be very, very sleepy, not subject to much change at all. In the field of taxation we had many sources of change. There were federal laws, state laws, county laws, and even to some degree city laws. We also had international tax laws, jurisdictional laws, and local laws to deal with. Then there are the rules and regulations of thousands of taxing authorities and understanding how to deal with conflicting interpretations of the same laws. Finally we had to deal with interpreting judicial decisions since the cases did not generally deal with just one issue in the lower courts. We had ethical issues to deal with and there were the poor conclusions of others. Finally we had to deal with what clients wanted us to do rather than what we concluded needed to be done.
Auditors are getting new accounting principles, auditing standards, interpretations, and non-authoritative opinions thrown at them monthly. Many are narrow rules but others have broad reaching application and they are expected to be familiar enough with them to explain them to clients when applicable and know how to apply them.
Physicians have huge amounts of information thrown at them daily. Alternative medicine runs all over the place and yet patients expect doctors to be current on the latest fads. New medical breakthroughs happen with great regularity.
Or, how about certain fields of law and, yes, science.
No, our industry in many ways is like a sleepy old dog. While change may not be what we signed up for, change is inevitable in all true modern professions. Too many in the industry want to live in the past and that conflict produces far too much unnecessary stress.