Graham Fleming and the value of changing direction

Graham Fleming has a habit that may make his colleagues regard a ringing telephone with mixed feelings. He starts early. Asked in 2025 for the habit he swears by, the Finance of America chief executive answered, “Starting early, every day.” People who work with him, he added, would recognize him as their first morning caller. In mortgage finance, apparently, even the day’s first conversation comes with an origination process.

It is a small detail, but a useful entrance into a career usually described through transactions. Fleming has founded a lender, overseen the machinery behind lending businesses, and taken charge of a public company while it was deciding which businesses to leave behind. His work requires attention to the next loan and to decisions whose consequences will outlast the next earnings call.

The central turn came in 2022. Finance of America decided to stop originating forward mortgages across its retail and wholesale channels. Fleming, then interim chief executive, helped steer the company toward a narrower proposition: older homeowners, the equity in their houses, and ways to turn some of that equity into usable money. A mortgage executive was changing direction by changing which direction the mortgage ran.

The accountant before the chief executive

Fleming attended Dublin Business School in Ireland and is a Chartered Certified Accountant. Before Finance of America, his jobs included chief financial officer of AMRESCO Residential Mortgage. His background puts accounting, capital markets and financial management near the beginning of the story, before the chief executive title and the public statements about retirement.

There was also a founder’s chapter. In 2006, he launched Icon Residential Lenders and served as president. The business operated through wholesale and retail channels, funded more than $2.5 billion annually, and was sold to Rushmore Home Loans. Those are useful distinctions. Fleming’s experience includes building a lending operation as well as supervising an established one.

In December 2013, Urban Financial of America appointed him managing director and chief administrative officer, a newly created position. The company was entering a period under new ownership. Kristen Sieffert had just been named its chief operating officer. Years before they became the public company’s CEO and president, the two were already working within the same reverse mortgage business.

His administrative remit eventually covered finance, treasury, risk, compliance and corporate administration across operating subsidiaries. These are the parts of a lender that rarely make an advertisement. They determine whether the promises made in the advertisement can survive contact with the balance sheet.

When the diversified company chose a focus

Fleming became Finance of America’s president in October 2020. At that point, the company’s public argument emphasized diversification. In an investor presentation that year, he described a business designed to avoid dependence on one market. The attraction was understandable: different lending and services businesses could contribute at different moments.

By July 2022, he was interim CEO. That October, the company announced the planned shutdown of forward mortgage originations. A broad platform was being rethought. The announcement initially pointed toward a collection of specialty finance and services businesses, including reverse mortgages, rather than the fully concentrated retirement proposition that would follow.

Such decisions are tidy on an organizational chart and untidy everywhere else. Employees were affected. Fleming acknowledged that the closure would reach their families, too, and described support for job searches and efforts to help people move to other lenders. A strategic pivot has a human cost even when its presentation fits comfortably on a slide.

The sequence matters because it prevents the later story from becoming too neat. Finance of America did not simply announce a retirement vision and arrive there. It exited an established activity, continued reshaping the portfolio, and made an acquisition that would alter how it reached borrowers. Focus was something the company had to construct.

Buying a conversation with the homeowner

On March 31, 2023, Finance of America completed its acquisition of American Advisors Group assets. Five days later, Fleming’s appointment as chief executive took effect. Sieffert became president on the same date. The change in leadership and the change in business arrived almost together.

AAG added something quite specific: a direct route to consumers. Finance of America already had experience with proprietary reverse mortgages, but the acquired retail channel brought an advertising operation reaching more than 10 million consumers annually. That figure described advertising reach, rather than borrowers or completed loans. Its strategic meaning lay in the opportunity to begin more conversations.

“Our recent acquisition adds a new direct-to-consumer channel to our capabilities and expands our reach to millions of consumers,” Fleming said. The deal joined lending and capital markets capabilities to a consumer-facing distribution business. Having a product and getting someone to consider it are separate commercial problems.

The leadership pairing also deserves its own line in the account. Sieffert had led Finance of America Reverse since 2015 and was associated with its proprietary product development. Fleming brought the financial and organizational background. Their appointments put those experiences alongside one another as the company concentrated its attention on retirement financing.

“Our goal at Finance of America is to provide choice to the consumer.”

Graham Fleming, July 2026

A house is wealthy. Its owner may need cash.

The problem behind the strategy is easy to recognize. A homeowner can have substantial equity and still need more flexibility in day-to-day finances. A house has considerable talents; paying a bill without some additional arrangement is generally beyond them. Fleming’s company builds lending products around that gap between property wealth and available cash.

By July 2026, he was describing the business in terms of consumer choice across different products. In an interview, he pointed back to the company’s proprietary reverse mortgage launch in 2014. His emphasis was on whether a particular borrower’s needs fitted a federally insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage or a proprietary alternative. That is a more precise ambition than simply increasing one product’s volume.

HomeSafe Second gives the idea a concrete form. Reintroduced in 2023, the second-lien reverse mortgage lets eligible homeowners access some equity while retaining an existing first mortgage. Keeping an older, lower-rate first loan can be an important part of the appeal. The product addresses the inconvenience of replacing an entire mortgage merely to reach additional equity.

The distinction needs its conditions attached. Borrowers remain responsible for their first mortgage obligations, property charges, maintenance and occupancy requirements. A second-lien reverse mortgage does not make the first loan disappear. The value of the product depends on those obligations being understood as clearly as the cash it makes available.

The results have two columns

Fleming’s strategy can be examined through actual performance. For 2025, Finance of America reported $110 million in net income from continuing operations and $74 million in adjusted net income. Its origination platform’s funded volume rose 24%. Those figures describe a business that had moved beyond announcing its change of direction and was producing results within the new structure.

Then came a reminder that mortgage finance rarely supplies a single uncomplicated number. In the second quarter of 2026, the company funded $730 million, up 21% from a year earlier. It also reported a $29 million GAAP net loss from continuing operations alongside $19 million in adjusted net income. The two earnings measures answer different accounting questions and should remain visibly separate.

The company’s finance team attributed the gap to noncash fair-value changes and certain one-time effects. Loan production and accounting valuation can move in different directions. For Fleming, that makes the task more demanding than generating applications: the operating business and the financial assets it creates must both be managed.

This is where the accountant’s background returns to the foreground. Retirement lending depends on attracting homeowners and on financing loans over time. Customer-facing explanations may be simple; the financial structure behind them seldom is. The career that included treasury, risk and capital markets is directly relevant to the company he now runs.

More customers, and the work after closing

The next acquisition extended that responsibility. In June 2026, Finance of America completed a purchase of reverse mortgage servicing assets from Onity. The transaction covered roughly 20,000 HECM loans with $5.2 billion in unpaid principal balance. That balance measures the underlying loans, rather than the price paid for the assets.

Onity remained involved through a three-year subservicing arrangement. The detail is less glamorous than announcing an acquisition, but it explains how the work would continue after the announcement. Growing a mortgage business includes arranging the ongoing administration of existing loans and maintaining continuity for the customers attached to them.

Fleming described the deal as a step in the company’s growth strategy. Read beside AAG, it shows two different uses of acquisition: one expanded access to prospective borrowers; the other enlarged the servicing portfolio and customer base. The common thread is a more concentrated commitment to home equity lending for retirement.

The first call, then the next decision

In 2025, Fleming received a HousingWire Vanguard award. The recognition highlighted a period that included bringing AAG, FAR and the corporate business under one brand. His response on LinkedIn was brief: he was honored. The same public professional presence identifies his base as Irvine, California, while the company is headquartered in Plano, Texas.

There is a community strand to the career as well. Fleming’s involvement with Finance of America Foundation and Finance of America Cares sits alongside the lending work. In his introduction to the company’s code of conduct, he emphasizes employees, customer experience and an environment where constructive ideas are welcome. Those are stated commitments against which leadership can be judged.

As of October 24, 2026, the next scheduled public checkpoint is November 3, when Finance of America plans to report third-quarter results. The questions are practical: whether production keeps growing, how the portfolio performs, and how well the company serves the homeowners its strategy is meant to reach.

Fleming’s career has moved from accounting to founding, from administration to the chief executive’s office, and from a diversified platform to a more focused one. The early telephone call is an apt personal detail for that record. There is always another decision waiting, and he prefers to get to it before the morning has acquired much of a head start.