Cliff Auerswald

President, All Reverse Mortgage, Inc. | NMLS #14041 | 27 Years in Mortgage Banking | 20+ Years in Reverse Mortgages

Cliff Auerswald is the President of All Reverse Mortgage, Inc. and co-creator of ARLO™, the reverse mortgage industry’s first real-time pricing and eligibility calculator. He has 27 years in mortgage banking, with the past 20 devoted exclusively to reverse mortgages. His work sits at the intersection of mortgage finance, consumer education, and digital technology — the combination that produced ARLO™ and built the site you’re reading now into the most visited independent reverse mortgage resource in the country.

Cliff has been cited as a reverse mortgage and housing finance authority by Kiplinger, Yahoo Finance, Realtor.com, Home Health Care News, Care.com, and the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association. He is also an industry panelist on reverse mortgage technology and marketing.

“A reverse mortgage should be the right decision for the right reasons, not the result of high-pressure sales.”

Career Background

Cliff entered the mortgage industry at 17 through the Regional Occupational Program while still in high school at Villa Park High School in Orange County. His mother managed a second trust deed company in Tustin, and through her office, he got his first exposure to loan origination, credit files, and the mechanics of how mortgage transactions actually move. Most people learn this industry from the outside in. He learned it from inside a working shop before he had a driver’s license.

After graduating in 1998, he went straight for his California Real Estate Broker’s license with a specific goal in mind: he wanted to be the youngest licensed broker in the state. He passed the exam on his first attempt at 21. On the advice of his stepfather Michael G. Branson, he followed that up with formal training in loan processing, underwriting, and compliance, including MGIC underwriting certification.

By his early twenties, he had moved into mortgage sales and marketing, developing Alt-A lending strategies at a time when that market was moving fast. He became the top-producing account executive at Pacific Community Mortgage, Inc., which led to a promotion to Sales Manager, where he built and ran a team of account executives. That combination of production experience and management responsibility gave him a practical understanding of how mortgage businesses actually operate under pressure, knowledge that proved useful when he and Michael founded All Reverse Mortgage, Inc. in 2004.

Building ARLO™ and the Case for Transparent Pricing

The decision to build ARLO™ stemmed from a frustration Cliff had witnessed develop across the reverse mortgage industry. Borrowers had no way to get real loan pricing without sitting through a sales presentation first. Every quote required a phone call, every phone call came with pressure, and the numbers borrowers finally saw rarely matched what they had expected. The process was designed, whether intentionally or not, to keep consumers in the dark until they were already committed.

ARLO™ was built to fix that. It was the first reverse mortgage calculator to provide real-time loan pricing, actual program comparisons, and genuine closing cost estimates without requiring any personal contact information. Borrowers could run their own numbers, compare HECM and jumbo options side by side, and arrive at a conversation with a loan officer already informed. That shift in how consumers entered the process was the point.

Cliff had been interested in technology since he was 10 years old, when he took apart the family’s Tandy 1000 desktop computer to see how it worked. That instinct carried forward into self-taught software development, SEO, and consumer behavior analysis. ARLO™ is the product of those two tracks running together — mortgage expertise and technical execution built in-house rather than outsourced.

Consumer Advocacy

Cliff’s interest in reverse mortgages became personal before it was professional. His grandmother used a reverse mortgage to remain in her home and maintain her independence during the later years of her life. That experience gave him a clear sense of what the product is actually for when it is used well, and an equally clear sense of what it looks like when it isn’t.

All Reverse Mortgage has never originated any loan type other than reverse mortgages. That focus is intentional. It means every process improvement, every staff training, and every content decision is pointed at one product category and one borrower profile. Cliff oversees the educational side of that operation, including the articles, guides, and calculator tools that make up the site, as well as the ARLO™ question and answer platform where real borrower questions receive direct responses from licensed professionals.

He is an active contributor to industry education through webinars, expert panels, and his YouTube channel, where he publishes tutorials and program explanations aimed at borrowers who are still early in the research process.

Credentials and Affiliations

Cliff holds an individual NMLS license #14041 and serves as President of All Reverse Mortgage, Inc., which operates under NMLS #13999 and HUD Lender ID #26031-0007. The company is a HUD-approved HECM lender and a member of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association, whose Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility governs member conduct and consumer disclosures.

His LinkedIn profile and NRMLA industry listing are available for those conducting due diligence on their lender or verifying credentials. For media inquiries or direct consultation, Cliff can be reached at cliff@allreverse.com.

Content Edited by Cliff Auerswald

Articles and guides carrying Cliff’s name as editor reflect his direct review of the content for accuracy, compliance with current HUD guidelines, and alignment with how the programs actually work in practice. He oversees the editorial standards for the site’s consumer-facing content and works alongside Michael Branson to ensure that what borrowers read here reflects current program terms, accurate rate data, and honest assessments of both the benefits and the limitations of reverse mortgage products.