Longbridge’s Chris Mayer on ideas to borrow from other countries in later-life lending

America has historically leaned heavily on the government-backed Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program as a way for older homeowners to tap into their equity. But amid higher interest rates and steep upfront costs, private-sector alternatives are aggressively stepping in to fill the void.

Proprietary reverse mortgages in the U.S. are evolving to offer higher loan-to-value ratios, lower upfront costs and second-lien options, reaching more than half the market in the first quarter of 2026. But even as product offerings evolve, industry leaders are looking overseas for a road map to further innovation.

“We’re still relatively nascent in the non-government portion of the business compared with the rest of the world,” Chris Mayer, CEO of Longbridge Financial, said in an interview with HousingWire’s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD).

Mayer noted that markets in Europe — particularly the United Kingdom, which boasts a highly mature “later-life lending” sector — demonstrate the benefits of diverse funding sources. Abroad, life insurance companies routinely hold loans on their balance sheets and financial planners integrate equity release into holistic retirement strategies.

To unpack these market dynamics and explore the road ahead, RMD sat down with Mayer to discuss the core challenges limiting today’s HECM program, the ongoing evolution of proprietary products, and the crucial lessons American lenders can borrow from abroad to better serve borrowers.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Flávia Nunes: When you look at the U.S. market for senior homeowner financing solutions, what’s the core problem?

Chris Mayer: We’re still relatively nascent in the non-government portion of the business compared with the rest of the world. There are a couple places in Asia that have some government-backed programs, but they’re small. Nobody has anything like HECM, which has had a significant effect on product development.

The HECM has things you would never be able to do in the private market. Nobody is going to create a product where the principal limit grows every year and you can draw at the underlying note rate, up to that maximum, for an unlimited period — you could live 30 years. And there aren’t many places where, if your house burns down in an L.A. fire, you can continue to draw proceeds as long as you commit to rebuilding the home.

Nunes: But how does the HECM cost compare to other products?

Mayer: The interest rate in the HECM product is low relative to most parts of the world. You get a loan that is 2% to 2.5% above the index rate, plus a 50 basis-point insurance premium. The flip side is this: The underwriting hasn’t changed as interest rates rose in 2022. The HECM continues to have lower interest rates, generating bigger surpluses.

Also, the upfront insurance fee is not a share of what your principal limit is. It is a share of the home value. For example, imagine you can take 40% of the home value, paying two points on the home value. If you live in a $400,000 home, you’re going to pay $8,000 upfront to access $160,000. That’s five points on the amount of money that you take out.

People look at that and say, ‘That is just expensive.’ The principal limits haven’t changed as the program performance has improved. In the U.S., the HECM has made itself less relevant.

Nunes: How has the private sector responded?

Mayer: We’ve been developing and securitizing proprietary products, and the securitization execution is improving. We will probably have as many as six or eight this year, and completed seven securitizations in 2024 and 2025. AAA spreads on every one of those has traded the same or better than it did before.

After you do that for a couple of years, you start to have a lower cost of capital. That’s allowed us and other companies coming into the business to have a higher loan-to-value ratio. Borrowers like to be able to pull more proceeds.

Our Platinum Peak product can offer 15% to 25% more proceeds than a HECM, depending on the 10-year Treasury rate. For people in their 60s, it can be even more, maybe up to 30% more proceeds. The upfront cost is lower and the interest rate is higher. Many borrowers would take the trade, which is basically, ‘I’m willing to pay a higher interest rate if I can get a bunch more money.’

Nunes: How have proprietary products evolved over time?

Mayer: The initial set of proprietary products were predominantly about situations where you couldn’t get a HECM. The initial round was jumbo programs — houses that today would be at or above about $1.3 million — and then condominiums, for example, that don’t qualify for Federal Housing Administration insurance but might be Fannie Mae– and Freddie Mac-eligible.

As that market started to grow, people started to offer products that would be competitive with — and better than — the HECM. The first real innovation there was our Platinum Peak product, a little over a year ago, where loan-to-value ratios were a little better. You might be able to get a few thousand more.

That opened up the market because borrowers who were HECM-eligible would choose a proprietary product. That was funded because securitization executions got better. Mortgage spreads in general have improved, but proprietary spreads have been improving faster than the rest of the market.

That’s allowed people to offer other enhancements. There are second-lien products, where you can take out a reverse mortgage behind a traditional first lien. You’ve also seen our Platinum Preserve product in which you can borrow against some portion — but not all — of your home. I’ll call them more niche products. 

Nunes: Is looking abroad a natural next step for finding more solutions? If so, which regions or countries do you watch most closely — and why?

Mayer: There are nascent markets in France and Italy. Sweden has a bank that offers equity release products on its balance sheet. But let me focus on the U.K., because it has a long and distinguished history in this space.

Equity release (reverse) mortgages are anywhere between 10% to 36%, depending on the year, of all mortgages originated for borrowers who are 55 and older. In the U.S, we did about $260 billion of forward mortgages to people 62 and older last year — and about $8 billion of reverse mortgages, or 3% of originations.

The U.K. market is much more mature than the U.S. market. They refer to their products as ‘later-life lending,’ reflecting the broad variety of different products that are available. And unlike in the U.S., many of the insurance companies offer products.

The presence of insurance companies really changes things. First, they have a much more robust product offering at lower interest rates that doesn’t have such a high upfront origination fee — and those products are held on insurance company balance sheets.

They don’t have rules that make it difficult for insurance companies to originate mortgages or prohibit financial planners from earning a commission — they can get paid for originating an equity release loan the same way they can for an annuity or an insurance policy.

In the U.S., you can’t get paid a commission for a mortgage, even if the mortgage is essentially serving the same purpose as one of those other financial planning products. The entire infrastructure of the system is very different, and it allows them to do things that we couldn’t do, but are getting closer to being able to do so.

Nunes: Who are these products designed for and who is actually using them?

Mayer: Both the U.S. and the U.K. serve a market of needs-based borrowers who have an existing mortgage and are struggling to make the payments. They don’t have enough saved in retirement. Home equity is a large share of their net worth. These are middle-class and lower-middle-class borrowers who have worked their whole lives, they’ve earned their equity, and they’re using that equity to help them retire better.

What the U.K. also has, though, are people who are thinking about financial planning and are using the home as part of financial planning. They’re able to offer products at interest rates that are notably lower than we’re able to offer, because those products are not being securitized.

They don’t have a gift tax, so you’re seeing people use money to give to the kids, financial and real estate planning, liquidity to live off to keep assets invested — more of that is happening there than is happening in the U.S. Part of it is because those borrowers don’t need the highest LTV, but they’re interest rate sensitive.

On the other side, there are people who would like to have higher LTV ratios, but they have something called Solvency II — a set of regulatory restrictions that limit the LTVs on loans for insurance companies to hold the loans on their balance sheet.

We’re actually ahead of the U.K. in terms of having securitizations to fund higher-LTV products. We range up to about 61% for an 90-year-old. For borrowers under age 70, it’ll be around the low-mid 40s.

Nunes: How easy is it for borrowers to refinance or access additional funds once they already have a loan?

Mayer: Refinancing mortgages is much more an American thing than a global thing. In some years, as much as one-third of their originations are subsequent draws on loans that were taken out several years earlier. That’s much less expensive for consumers.

Their ability to give people proceeds — not by refinancing the whole loan, but by adding tranches behind the original tranche — is a lot easier to do, because the entire loan is owned by an insurance company. You don’t have to go talk to all the bond investors and redo the securitization.

FN: What other senior-focused solutions have you seen in Europe, beyond traditional reverse mortgages?

CM: In Italy and France, they have something called a ‘viager’ where you sell your home on their equivalent of the MLS and you live in it as long as you live. These are not often sold to investors; they’re often sold to other consumers. They’re not huge, but they exist.

When the person who lives in it moves out or dies, you get the home. They literally sell the equity in their home, and there’s an amortization table for how to calculate it. Let’s say you’re living in a $500,000 home. For an 85-year-old, you give them $350,000, they live as long as they want in the home, pay all the costs, and when they die, it’s yours.

Another interesting thing that they do in the U.K. — which I just cannot imagine doing in the U.S. — is health underwriting. If you are sick, you will get more money on your reverse mortgage, because your life expectancy is shorter and therefore you can borrow more money upfront. Now these are insurance companies, so they’re used to underwriting health for life insurance. They have the skill set to do it.

FN: How are lessons from international markets — especially the U.K. — shaping the product road map at Longbridge?

CM: Longbridge offers a couple of different products, and you’re going to see us do some other things this year and next year that are tied into ideas over in the U.K.

One of the things that I admire a lot about the U.K. market is the diversity of funding sources that allow them to do different things, but we’re well equipped in the U.S. to do some of those things with (parent company) Ellington Financial. As we move on, you’re going to start to see us do some things that are built off lessons in the U.K. — how they finance, how they think about risk and how they model out prepayments.