Headquartered in San Ramon, CA, CMG Financial is a privately held, top-producing lender founded in 1993 by Christopher M. George.
The company is a recent entrant to the reverse mortgage space but ended the federal fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, as the 23rd largest HECM retail lender in the country, having increased sales by 136 percent.
The person responsible for managing CMG Financial’s reverse mortgage operation is Sean Kirksey, who became a loan officer in 1994 and transitioned to reverse mortgages in 2013.
Kirksey sat down with Reverse Mortgage magazine to learn more about CMG and how reverse mortgages are fitting into the company’s growth strategy.
Reverse Mortgage: How did you get your start in reverse mortgages?
Sean Kirksy: The very first loan that I ever did was for my grandfather. He came to me and said he wanted to get a reverse mortgage and like a lot of loan officers, I was skeptical. I thought he was going to get scammed and lose his house. I told him if this was something he wanted to do, let me dig in, let me do the research, and see if it works out. Once I saw how the loan worked, how it had a significant impact on his general level of happiness – and the relief that he received from no longer having a financial burden over his head – it really inspired me. Probably a week or two after his loan closed, I moved from the lender I was at, and I went over to AAG as a loan officer. I’ve been in reverse since then for the last 11 years. I’ve never looked back. I couldn’t do a forward mortgage if you paid me to. I’ve just been completely all in on reverse.
RM: So that was around 2013. Is your grandfather still benefiting from his reverse mortgage?
SK: Unfortunately, he’s no longer with us. He was in a good position financially. He had two pensions, but he still had a mortgage on his home. The reverse mortgage eliminated that debt and provided him the opportunity to travel more and live a more comfortable life that he had earned.
RM: How long has CMG Financial originated reverse mortgages? How many states are you licensed? How many people does the company employ overall and within the reverse division?
SK: I joined CMG Financial at the end of 2022 to build out our operations and infrastructure for reverse mortgages. We funded our first loan in January 2023. Reverse mortgages are still a relatively new product for us, but CMG has a strong history of offering innovative solutions that support borrowers at different life stages. Two standout programs include the HomeFundIt loan, which enables family and friends to contribute toward a down payment, and the All-in-One loan, a fully liquid first-lien mortgage designed for rapid payoff. These innovative products were a big part of what drew me to CMG. We’re licensed nationwide, including Puerto Rico and Guam. CMG Financial employs thousands of professionals across the organization, including a robust team dedicated to reverse mortgages. Within our reverse division, we have a growing group of specialists solely focused on this market, complemented by a significant number of retail loan officers who are certified to offer reverse mortgage products alongside their forward mortgage work.
RM: Is your team based in California or all over?
SK: We are spread throughout the country. We have two regional managers. Peter Klamkin handles Texas and east of Texas and Gina Larson covers everything west of Texas. Our reverse-only loan officers are spread far and wide, including California, Texas, Florida, Massachusetts. Our certified loan officers cover every state in the country.
RM: You were at AAG for seven years and Liberty Reverse Mortgage for almost two years. What was it about CMG Financial that appealed to you?
SK: CMG has an incredibly entrepreneurial and innovative spirit. We’re using technology in a lot of ways that I was never exposed to at either AAG or Liberty. It was an opportunity to build something completely from scratch and have the support of an organization behind me. There’s a very strong ethical line that runs throughout all of CMG, which was important to me when considering where I would go.
RM: How did you and CMG Financial connect?
SK: I did not know them. I got a call one day from their recruiter. They were looking at building out a reverse platform. They contacted me and I flew out to California and met with them. I immediately came away with a sense that this was the right place. This was a good group of leaders. I’ve never in my life worked with a company where the executives work as hard as they work at CMG. They are constantly available, constantly involved in trying to find solutions for people. After that first interview, as I flew home, it was for me a foregone conclusion, I’m going to CMG.
RM: What distinguishes CMG Financial from other forward mortgage companies?
SK: I’ve been in the mortgage business since 1994. I’ve worked at a lot of different organizations. What sets CMG apart is the fact that we are still run day to day by the founder. No investors, we’re private. We don’t have layers of bureaucracy or hoops to jump through to bring new ideas to the table. I came in and they said build us a division. They didn’t tell me how to do it. They didn’t tell me who to work with. Here’s a blank slate, and you can create what you want to create. Which was a great opportunity. CMG is constantly looking for new opportunities to provide value to the existing relationships that we have. Whether again, it’s our HomeFundIt loan, or All in One loan or reverse loan or Medical Professional loan, we have such a huge array of products that we offer. The team that rolls those products out, I can tell you right now, they’ve got another 15 that they’re working on. They’re constantly working on new and innovative products that they can roll out into the market.
RM: What’s the Medical Professional loan?
SK: A lot of nurses are travel nurses. They go from one company to the next. It’s difficult to qualify them for traditional financing because it looks like they have massive job instability. The reality is that a change happened during Covid. It didn’t exist prior to Covid, and once Covid hit we had this new career created essentially for medical professionals. We built a loan program to address that.
RM: Given the challenges that many lenders faced this year, to what do you attribute your success?
SK: Our success is rooted in education, innovation and adaptability. We know this is a high education sale. The reverse mortgage is an innovative product, at least from the consumer’s perspective. They need to understand it. From an adaptability perspective, our clients can have anywhere from a two-hour decision-making process to a one-year decision making process. We need to meet them where they’re at and provide them with the information that they need to make an informed decision. Because we have such an entrepreneurial model, we’re able to meet the clients where they are. We’re able to do things very efficiently because we came into this with a blank slate. We didn’t have any legacy processing issues. We didn’t have any software constraints. We were able to build our operation from a blank slate. When you have that opportunity, and you have the right people in place, you’re able to build something that’s very efficient.
RM: You sold reverse mortgages for over a decade and then recently built your own sales platform. What makes a successful reverse mortgage loan officer?
SK: The first thing is you must have drunk the Kool-Aid. You must believe. I am an absolute diehard believer in this product. I have seen it change lives on so many levels. I genuinely believe if a consumer is stressed and has anxiety and pressure and not doing well financially, I believe if I sell that person a reverse mortgage, they’re going to live longer. They’re going to be happier and have a much better quality of life. I believe the people who we are fortunate enough to serve with a reverse mortgage have absolutely earned their right to be in the position that they’re in. When I look at loan officers, one of the first things that I look for is do they share that belief system with me. If they look at this as just another product that they can slam together and make a whole bunch of money on, they’re not going to be a good fit with CMG. Beyond that, they must be good listeners. They must have a deep understanding of the product. And they must have a willingness to constantly study that product. We’re getting to a place where there’s some AI tools out there that I can plug in a scenario, and it’ll tell me whether a reverse mortgage will be a good fit for a client. Those are great, but our loan officers, when they’re engaging with a client, they need to be authentic and to be authentic, they must know as much information themselves as they can possibly know.
RM: What goals do you have for 2025?
SK: We want to continue doing what we’re doing, which is going where other companies are not. When we’re meeting with clients, in many cases, we’re the first people introducing the concept of a reverse mortgage to them. If we’re all going to fight over the two percent market penetration we currently have, this business will never grow. We want to continue our focus on going where other people aren’t, which means continuing to solidify our relationships with financial advisors and with real estate agents. We do a lot of HECM for Purchase business, so we want to continue focusing on that. Our goal as a company is to become a Top 10 lender in the space before the end of 2025. We’ve got licensed loan officers out in the field who have their own referral relationships. Part of our growth strategy must be advertising to those people and having conversations with them, because they can lead us to three or four more customers who we’re probably not going to get any other way.
