Korea’s Banking Regulator Looks To Expand Reverse Mortgages

The Korea Times recently reported that Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) is considering expanding reverse mortgages to ensure its seniors are able to live stable lives after retirement.

According to the article, it’s the regulator is looking at easing conditions for reverse mortgages, which are currently available to those aged 65 or older with a home worth 900 million won or less.  The FSC is also contemplating expanding the program to people who are 60 or 55 years old and increasing the amount of money borrowers can receive.

Yoon Ja-young writes that the program was introduced in July 2007 and was modeled after the HECM program in the US, but attracted only 515 people in 2007 and 695 in 2008.  “We deemed that the program should be expanded given the economic recession and early retirement following corporate restructuring,” the spokesperson said.

More Seniors to Get Pension Through Reverse Mortgage

Source: Reverse Mortgage Daily

Mortgage banking. What are the job prospects in your country? Any good marketing ideas?

Sep 03, 2007 by Sam S | Posted in Renting & Real Estate

I live in South Africa (we call this type of business Mortgage Origination) and have been in the business since 1995 and am now running my own business.It is highly competitive.We are always looking for new marketing ideas, if you have any I would love to hear from you.I now specialise in homeloans where the clients have a credit problem.This is quite new here and very successful. We are a mix between a first world and a third world country and look up to our overseas counterparts as you seem to be extremely progressive when it comes to marketing.

The most important thing is to take care of your customers one at a time so that they continue to utilize your services and refer others. The next thing is to stay in front of your customers - one of the biggest mistakes we make in our industry is to let our customers forget about us after the loan is closed. A web site that sends out a newsletter every month is a great way to stay in touch.

Partner up with realtors, attorneys, financial planners, insurance agents, etc - they will know people who need mortgage help. Join a BNI group if you aren't already a member. (www.bni.com is their international web site.) The most important thing is to keep your phone ringing IN so that you don't have to dial OUT!

Can the mortgage banking industry regain its good reputation in the near future?

Jul 23, 2008 by R. Emanuel | Posted in Government

Can confidence and trust be restored quickly after millions of foreclosures and ruining the credit of so many? Maybe people should not accept loans they cannot afford and learn it doesn't help to be sore losers.

Depends on the type of reputation you are looking for. Either they really tighten up and make it very hard to borrow money and have a reputation of being really mean and only lending to the rich but being profitable and making good loans. or having a reputation of been great to work with and easy to get money loaned to you but having everyone defaulting and getting forclosed on and needing to be bailed out by the government. Think we just got done with the second senario... get ready for the first.... hope you all already have a house!

Is McCain right to demand corrupt congress members on a plate over this mortgage banking diaster?

Sep 20, 2008 by Mordecai Zion | Posted in Elections

People want some satisfaction for being injured or ruined for the remainder of their lives plus facing a lingering depression. The real horrible pain has not really begun. I am convinced that it come soon enough.

When and until the consequences are severe and immediate, this kind of "free for all" with other peoples money will never stop.
Look at Japan yesterday. A Minister resigned because the rice crop was "tainted". That's honor and pride in accepting FULL responsibility for success OR failure. Not in our country.

when we are going to see a good change in banking, mortgage industries to protect the consumers?

May 22, 2007 by real1 | Posted in Other - Business & Finance

we borrow money from bank or other financial instutue with very high rate and when we put our money in the bank we get barely 3% - 5%. this is not a fair game.
no wonder ordinary people have hard time to get out of debt.

Anybody wish J.Edgar Hoover was back to clean up congress and mortgage banking?

Jul 11, 2008 by King of CNN | Posted in Elections

He was never charming but he was a super patriot and would never have let the corruption and excutive-style robbery to have gone so far. Now what?

Yeah, I would rather have him wiretapping our politicians, than have them wiretapping us. J Edgar Hoover is on record as opposing a national police force, something our politicians want, supposedly to protect us from terrorism.

When Hoover was running the FBI, the Bureau was keeping track of known terrorists, and was not under the thumb of the criminals in Washington (that's why they still hate Hoover).

Our real danger is coming from our politicians, not the terrorists. The real action, is in the REACTION. Terrorism is just a tool to justify the creation of a police state.

Is the banking/mortgage meltdown the goverment's fault to begin with?

Sep 24, 2008 by 1/20/2013: Obama's Last Day! | Posted in Government

Does this crisis show the failure of capitalism? Or does it show the failure and arrogance of government meddling? Is it possible that ONE MAN is responsible? Consider this:

Under rules implemented by the Clinton Administration in 1995, banks and mortgage companies were required to give loans to people who could not afford them. This scheme was welfare pure and simple—hand over money to people everyone knew would not be able to pay it back. The banks and mortgage companies did as required. Otherwise they would face stiff penalties and possibly lose their license to operate. So, they gave out the money to put people in homes they could not afford.

But the banks had to get the money from somewhere. They got it from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two failed quasi-government organizations. Fannie and Freddie urged, encouraged and bullied banks to give out more and more high-risk loans.

In 2000, then-Rep. Richard Baker proposed a bill to reform Fannie and Freddie's oversight. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) dismissed the idea, saying concerns about the two were "overblown" and that there was "no federal liability there whatsoever."

• Two years later, Mr. Frank was at it again. "I do not regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems," he said in response to another reform push. And then: "I regard them as great assets."

• Again in June 2003, the favorite of the Beltway press corps assured the public that "there is no federal guarantee" of Fan and Fred obligations.

• A month later, Freddie Mac's multibillion-dollar accounting scandal broke into the open. But Mr. Frank was sanguine. "I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis," he said at the time.

Three months later he repeated the claim that Fannie and Freddie posed no "threat to the Treasury." Even suggesting that heresy, he added, could become "a self-fulfilling prophecy."

• In April 2004, Fannie announced a multibillion-dollar financial "misstatement" of its own. Mr. Frank was back for the defense. Fannie and Freddie posed no risk to taxpayers, he said, adding that "I think Wall Street will get over it" if the two collapsed.

Pretty clear. It was not the “private sector” failing as Congressman Frank declared. It was government that failed. Specifically, it was people like Barney Frank that failed the American people. Moreover, he committed these acts for a pure ideological reason—to advance his warped left-wing vision.

And what does Frank now insist is a deal-breaker? More money has to be made available to keep these people in the homes they couldn’t afford in the first place!

Frank's recent comment: "The private sector got us into this mess…The government has to get us out of it.” -- isn't that insanely ironic, coming from the Man Who Made The Meltdown????

This is really oversimplified. The US doesn't have a purely capitalist economy. It has a mixed economy that combines elements of a free market economy and a socialized economy.

Some of the reasons for the socialized aspects of the economy are based upon a broad based recognition that markets have positive and negative externalities and it is possible for markets to fail. One of the externalities is that lenders may not make loans to certain people because of irrational prejudices and/or a failure to accurately determine the risk of making such loans. On the other hand, lenders can also make the opposite mistake. Backstopping lenders is the Federal Reserve system and other forms of deposit insurance which may introduce moral hazard and/or cause depositors to be less careful than they ought to be when seeking a place to save money.

Aside from the basic economics, there is a widespread political preference for home ownership vs. welfare housing or renting. Therefore, policies encourage ownership through the mortgage interest tax deduction, federal catastrophic insurance, tacit federal backing of government sponsored entities and etc.

And lastly, certain financial transactions contain risks that cannot be perfectly modeled either by the private financiers, ratings agencies or their public regulators.

im trying to learn about mortgage banking ... but i cant seem to find a website that has a break down of it?

Jan 12, 2007 by deemoney101 | Posted in Other - Business & Finance

im really wanna learn about the mortgage industry ... i believe there is so much money to be made here and i dont have a singe clue about it ... i would like to know both the broker and lending side of mortgages... any answers or web sites that explain about mortgage banking and loans would be very helpful ..

The learning curve associated with the mortgage business can seem unberable when compared to, say insurance. About 75% of loan officers dont know their ass from their elbow and are just salesmen. The remaining 15% are more financial planner kind of salespeople. If you want to make honest money and not spend your day at a call center with a headset selling 68 year old widows shitty 3yr prepay negs...then I would suggest looking to some of the leaders in the mortgage retail business. A subscription to MOM (mortgage originators monthly) will get you off to a great start. Be scepticle when seeking advice from the "top dog" loan officers you find online. These guys parade the country preaching all the things they claim to have invented. They put their face on rediculous marketing products and tell you it works for them. A collegue of mine told me just the other day that one of the most famed loan officers, who preaches like I talk about above, only closed 20million in one of his biggest years. Anyway, these guys are salesmen, look for the ones who know what they are talking about and can answer complicated questions about mortgages...An example, most loan officers couldnt tell you about "principle curtailments" and how they pertain to portfolio lenders guidlines. But a veteran could.
If you want to learn wholesale, the only thing you can do is start at a wholesale company. There are a lot of carrers involved, but the gist of it is: Underwriting, processing, funding, document creation (doc drawer), compliance, quality control, secondary marketing and ofcourse the never ending job possibilities of the wholesale bank representative (rep.) as known in the industry. If you work hard and I mean really hard, you can learn the major portion of the industry in 3 years. You will always see the difference though in your co-workers who have 20 years experience. In lending, you really do learn something new everyday.

To learn about the above jobs, go to monster.com and read the descriptions. Another great resouce is salary.com. This will give you a detailed discription and how much people in that job are making, in a given zip code or state.

Its a great business, lots of fun, lots of stress, and very challenging. It is also very, very, very close nit. Everyone knows everyone through 1 or 2 degrees at the most. To tell you the truth though, if you want money, you will fail in this business. You might have a month where you make 40k, you will spend it all and BK like the rest of the washouts. Stay ethical and true to your clients satisfaction. The temptations are there, dont give in. Be fair and ethical and ignore your co-workers who drive 300k cars to work...they all go away, trust me.

Good luck.

Is the mortgage industry/financials services/banking embracing the open source community?

Jul 06, 2006 by jonoiscool2u | Posted in Other - Business & Finance

I am hearing all sorts of things about Open Source. I am wondering if banking and financial services is embracing this and where the key innovations are.

different mortgage solutions exists, I have outlined some below

(I would also suggest you read : http://umgarticles.atspace.com/mortgage.htm

Pension Plan
Using a pension plan to accumulate the balance of your mortgage is a tax free saving scheme. The balance of your house will be saved over a period of time until you can pay your final balance. If you do intend to use a pension fund to save for the balance of your house, consideration should be taken into account to open another pension fund for retirement purposes too.

ISA Plan
With an ISA plan you invest in stocks and shares via an Individual Savings Account (ISA) - which is a tax-free method of saving. This method of saving may not be suitable for most borrowers. Before considering this option you should consult with an independent financial adviser.
Endowment
An endowment is still the most common type of interest only mortgage which also provides life assurance cover and a fixed payment for investment. The endowment policy along with the interest only mortgage should in effect end at the same time, leaving you with the ownership of your home and nothing to pay. Endowments have undergone much criticism; this is due to investors being promised high returns from their investments. However lately this has not been the case, borrowers have found their investments have been as good as expected and a shortfall in the end amount of invested cash will not match the amount owed on the current property.
Taking into account the recent problems that have arisen regarding endowment policies it is worth remembering that returns on endowment policies have been pretty good, however you do need to see the term out in full. Also endowments do provide life assurance as part of the actual policy, so in the unfortunate event of a death the mortgage balance is paid in full.
Advantages of an interest only mortgage
• Your investments and savings could accumulate more than the required amount to cover the final payment; this could leave you more cash for your own personal use.
• Some plans have good tax benefits and help reach the required amount it a quicker and cheaper rate.
Disadvantages of an interest only mortgage
• In the unfortunate event of your investments not acquiring the designated amount of cash to cover the loan repayment, the investor could face a shortfall which they will then need to pay. If you are worried about a shortfall on your investment, you should keep in touch with your investor and request regular updates on the situation of your endowment. If the worst comes to the worst, you can increase payments to compensate for the loss of investment.
• Cashing in your endowment, ISA or pension could have adverse effects on the amount of money you have saved over the past however many years. If you do decide to cash in any existing policies you may be subjected to a penalty, this could be a cash amount specified by the investment company/lender. Please seek professional advice if you are worried about the end results of your finances, don’t be too hasty as most policies accumulate more of the cash in the final year

for a complete informational package I suggest you visit one of the many mortgage informational sites the best free one in my opinion is :

also read http://umgarticles.atspace.com/mortgage.htm

How may PAC's be linked to the current mortgage/banking crisis?

Oct 30, 2008 by zhuo | Posted in Personal Finance

Based on Top 10 PACs

It depends how you want to connect the PACs (political action committees) to the mortgage/banking crisis. Do you want to see if the PACs gave money to certain members of congress or other elected officials? You'll have to do the research on the reports filed by each PAC which list the politicians who received donations and the individuals and companies that gave donations to the PAC. You can also research the campaign committees for the politicians since they have to file reports stating who made donations to them.

Here's a link to an article that lists the top 10 PACs from 2006. You can also look for a similar list for 2007 to see if there are any changes to the top 10 PACs.

http://uspolitics.about.com/od/campaignfinancereform/tp/2006_top_10_PAC.htm

Hope this helps. Good luck!

how do you word skills gained working for a mortgage broker in sales and loan processing for a job in banking?

Sep 15, 2006 by melissa S | Posted in Financial Services

I am trying to break into the banking industry. I have a business degree and am currently working for a mortgage broker. I have experience as a mortgage broker and am assisting the BDM with on the job training of new consultants to complete applications, capacity tests and ensuring all requirements are met before sending to the bank. I am also working in administration to process loans to the bank and monitoring of existing clients homeloans.

Just apply for a load of jobs, you have a good background for a move into this sector