Senior Lending Network - Retail, Wholesale - Reverse Mortgages

Effective July 7, 2009, Senior Lending Network, a dba of World Alliance Financial Corp. will no longer accept new loan applications. The announcement was posted on both their retail and wholesale web sites; brokers were also notified via email. From the company's official press release:

"World Alliance Financial Corp., a reverse-mortgage lender that operates the Senior Lending Network out of offices in Melville, New York, and Troy, Michigan, announced today that it will no longer accept new loan applications, and will begin scaling back its operations effective immediately."

Jean Noble, spokesperson for the Melville, NY-based company, said 140 employees had been laid off. Reiterating the company's statement, she stressed that Senior Lending Network was not going out of business. As indicated in the "Transition FAQ," World Alliance Financial and Senior Lending Network will continue to service existing accounts, and work with customers and brokers with loans in the pipeline. At peak, Noble estimated, Senior Lending Network had funded some 900 reverse mortgage loans monthly, or about $100 million in volume.

As noted in the various company statements, World Alliance Financial Corp. and Belgium-based parent KBC Group are "working diligently to find a buyer or capital partner for the business," and Noble added "hopefully we'll be back in 90 to 120 days." According to one source who wrote to us, "they were supposed to be purchased by a banking entity and it fell through." From ReverseMortgageDaily:

"WAF's parent company, KBC Group has been hit hard by the downturn in the economy, receiving government relief three different times adding up to $41.5 billion in financing and guarantees to recover from disastrous mortgage bets that its financial engineers and traders made."

One of the nation's top 4 providers of Reverse Mortgage loans, Senior Lending Network was perhaps most recognized for its commercials by advertising spokesperson and actor Robert Wagner. Join our Forum Discussion or feel free to email or post your comments below.