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Jim Cory, managing director of reverse mortgages at Guild Mortgage, has been in the industry for the better part of three decades. He is a longtime member of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA), and he was recently elected as its co-chair alongside Mike Kent of PHH Mortgage Corp.
Cory first joined the association in 1998 and previously served the board as vice chair. He holds the association’s Certified Reverse Mortgage Professional (CRMP) designation, and he has worked in leadership positions in several reverse mortgage companies during his career.
HousingWire’s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD) sat down with Cory to get a better idea of his outlook for the new position and the industry as a whole heading into 2025.
Chris Clow/RMD: You’ve been involved with the association for a long time, and now you are in this key leadership position as an industry representative. Was this a no-brainer for you? It’s a volunteer job, of course, but there are a lot of responsibilities that go into it.
Jim Cory: Taking on a role like this is not a no-brainer, and I don’t want it to be. It is a volunteer organization, and taking on a co-chair position means an awful lot more responsibility and more time that I’m going to have to put into the association. So, it’s not something I could do without talking to key people at my company and back at home. There are much greater responsibilities.
And it’s made much easier, I have to say, serving as co-chair with Mike Kent. That makes it much easier. He’s a great guy. I consider him a friend and somebody I can really learn from. He’s fantastic.
Clow: What does it mean for you, as a longtime industry and association member, to reach this position?
Cory: First of all, it’s a huge honor. I’ve been in the reverse mortgage industry for 27 years. I’ve been a board member since 2010 and I’ve been vice chair for the last several years. There have been times that NRMLA has elevated vice chairs into the co-chair role, and times that we haven’t. I think we’re doing a better job of now grooming the folks that are vice chairs to be the next chairs. I think I was kind of the first one in a while that we did that on.
Clow: What’s the division of labor like between you and Kent? He’s been co-chair now for the past several years, and he previously worked with Scott Norman in that role. When it comes to comparing notes to determine what to do, how does that look?
Cory: We’re still finding that out, first of all, but my mission is this outreach program. A lot of my energies are going to be spent toward that. Because Scott stepped down a few months ago out of sequence with the NRMLA board and NRMLA officers, Mike has been the sole chair for the last several months, and he’s done a fantastic job.
I’m going to spend most of my energies on this new mission of inter-industry outreach with the forward side, while Mike is doing a great job of tending to all of the other work streams that NRMLA has got right now. That’s not to say I won’t be involved. But I think if you were going to look at what sections people are going to lead, that would be it.
Clow: You have clearly already started that outreach work, but is some of it kind of preliminary? Do you feel like you’re going to hit the ground running at the beginning of next year, or do you think you’re already “off to the races?”
Cory: Yes (laughs). I look at things as a long-term effort, so we’re off to the races. Are you going to see anything immediately, like, within the next two months? I don’t know. We’ll definitely be doing things, but we will, for sure, on our side, be aiming to move the needle of the industry as we reach out to more folks.
So, we are off to the races and are actually actively building a team. We can’t do these things alone, so I’m building a team right now to work on it, and we’ve got a lot of excitement and a lot of great ideas.
