Reverse Mortgage Jan-Feb 2021

CRMP: Across the Kitchen Table PAMELA AND MAC Tennant, co-founders and owners of Access Reverse Mortgage Corp. of Clearwater, FL, and two of the first CRMPs in the state, have been working together their entire adult lives. “I met Mac my first day at my new job at his father’s car rental company,” Pam recalls. This was in London, Ontario, Canada, where they both grew up. When asked if it was love at first sight or started out as more of a pro- fessional relationship, she replies, “I guess it was a little bit of both. He pursued me quite a few times before we went out together.” They were married in 1978 and have raised three sons and a daughter. They now have five grandchildren. Shortly after marriage, Pam and Mac moved to the Chicago area where he went to work at the corporate par- ent headquarters of his father’s car rental franchise, and Pam worked in a local franchise office. “We moved around the country quite a bit,” she says. “We ended up purchas- ing the Thrifty Car Rental franchise in Buffalo, NY.” Though now living permanently in the U.S., they maintained their Canadian citizenship for an interesting reason. “All of our kids played hockey, and we were cross- ing the border for matches several times a week. When you applied for U.S. citizenship back then, you had to list every time you had crossed the border or left the country. It was impossible to keep track, and the application would have been just too complicated.” Pam and Mac closed the Buffalo business in 2005 and moved to St. Petersburg, FL, where their eldest son was attending Eckerd College. “We had good friends who had a son in the reverse mortgage business down there, and we decided to part- ner with him.” They had become intrigued by the HECM idea—that a federally insured means of using the equity built up in a home could be used for an entire range of normal and extraordinary expenses of living. They believed that such a product was both underutilized and underrated. “It was a new opportunity for us. Thousands of Baby Boomers were retiring every day, and many were living in Florida. We had elderly parents ourselves, so we had a fundamen- tal understanding of what the product could do. And we basically love the idea of being able to help seniors live the kinds of lives they want.” A few years into the business, Pam and Mac bought out their partner, and they became sole owners and proprietors of Access Reverse Mortgage. “At one time, all of our chil- dren were involved in the business,” says Pam. “And our third son, Scott, does all of our traditional mortgages, while Mac and I concentrate on the reverse side.” The team is active in professional associations, includ- ing: NRMLA; the National Aging in Place Council; the Husband and Wife Team Develop Reverse Mortgage Business A Chat With Pamela and Mac Tennant, CRMPs By Mark Olshaker Pamela Tennant 14 REVERSE MORTGAGE / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021