The Blue Ocean Strategy and the Reverse Mortgage Industry's Secular Stagnation?
About six years ago, a substantial portion of the reverse mortgage industry began reading about and excitedly discussing the Blue Ocean Strategy. Today that conversation is greatly subdued if not, nonexistent. Why?
After three years of horrific losses and now completing the sixth year of downward sloping, peak to valley, secular stagnation, the industry is looking at low demand. Its "fishing" is composed mainly of targeted marketing, seeking out Realtors, working with builders, collaborating with financial advisers, and generalized marketing. The newest sources for demand are Realtors and builders, which are about a decade old and sound an awful lot like Red Ocean strategy to a CPA who was an average reverse mortgage originator. Worse, there are few, if any, "reverse mortgage originating" explorers searching for Blue Ocean.
As demand for reverse mortgages has tightened, the energies of the industry have focused more and more on the tried and true. The desire to find Blue Ocean is withering just when it should be expanding. We are now entering a new phase where the product is much more consumer protected but also less generous in proceeds resulting in weakened demand.
It is interesting that both 1) Dr. Alvin Hansen, the chief promoter of Keynesian economics in the US and a former economic adviser to FDR, and 2) Dr. Larry Summers, the Chief Economist of the World Bank and one of WJC's Secretaries of the Treasury, have concluded that when in stagnation, the best course of action is to find new sources of demand. So here in essence are two esteemed Harvard Economic Professors and advisers to Democratic Presidents with stellar resumes instructing their adherents that to move forward in stagnation one must seek out Blue Ocean.
It seems that the reverse mortgage industry has not only lost its vision for Blue Ocean but it is no longer listening to the advice of two of the most respected and greatest economic advisers the US Democratic Party has produced in the last century. One must ask why?