Fairway Home Mortgage announces educational partnership for home equity adviser credential
Fairway Home Mortgage on Tuesday announced a partnership with the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA) to unveil a new educational credential for NAIFA members.
The Certified Home Equity Advisor (CHEA) credential aims to help financial and insurance professionals “responsibly integrate home equity into comprehensive retirement planning,” Fairway explained in a press release. The continuing education program centers on the “ethical and strategic use of housing wealth — including reverse mortgages, when appropriate — as part of modern retirement strategies for clients age 55 and older.”
The CHEA credential will be offered exclusively to NAIFA members through an eight-hour program of academic research, case studies and fiduciary-aligned planning frameworks. The partnership is seeking to address a “long-standing gap in traditional financial education that often overlooks home equity as a retirement asset.”
Fairway and NAIFA developed the program together and will use licensed reverse mortgage specialists as teachers. The goal is to make more borrowers aware of reverse mortgages as a potential financial tool but not necessarily to increase product sales.
Those who complete the program earn the CHEA designation, along with access to a professional toolkit of consumer education resources and more.
“This program is about education, not origination,” George Bain, Fairway’s vice president of reverse lending initiatives, said in a statement. “Our goal is to help advisors better understand how housing wealth fits into retirement planning conversations, while maintaining the highest standards of compliance, ethics, and consumer protection.”
“Housing wealth is one of the largest and most underutilized assets in retirement planning,” said John Wheeler, NAIFA’s president-elect. “The CHEA credential reinforces NAIFA’s commitment to ethical, client-first education by equipping our members with the knowledge and confidence to address this asset responsibly and collaboratively.”
The course is being launched virtually and is initially available to NAIFA members in Colorado, with additional states being added during the first half of 2026. Those in Colorado can register online for a pair of four-hour sessions that are scheduled for March 17 and 19.
“The CHEA credential reflects growing industry recognition that retirement planning must evolve alongside demographic and economic realities, including longevity risk, market volatility, and rising healthcare costs,” said Brendan Bernat, senior director of credentials for NAIFA.
Fairway is a full-service national mortgage lender that does business across the forward and reverse channels. It was the sixth-largest originator of Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECMs) during the year ending in January 2026, according to data compiled by New View Advisors, endorsing 1,009 HECMs for a 3.8% market share.