Last Updated November 11, 2021

He is Jack M. Guttentag, now Professor of Finance Emeritus, formerly Jacob Safra Professor of International Banking, at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Earlier he was Chief of the Domestic Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, on the senior staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and managing editor of both the Journal of Finance (1974-77) and the Housing Finance Review (1983-89).

Professor Guttentag has been a student of the home loan market for many years, and his bibliography of scholarly articles, books and monographs is large and diverse. He has also been an active practitioner, serving as a consultant to many government agencies and private financial institutions, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, USAID, Freddie Mac, Citicorp, Dominion Bancshares, the World Bank, J.P. Morgan Securities, the New Zealand Bankers Association, and many others. In addition, he has been a director of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, Guild Mortgage Investments, and First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Rochester.

Throughout his career, Professor Guttentag has been concerned with the difficulties faced by consumers in the home loan market. In 1985 he joined with Gerald Hurst, a colleague at Wharton, to found GHR Systems, Inc. which developed a nationwide electronic network that lenders use to deliver complex mortgage information quickly to loan-officer employees, mortgage brokers, and consumers using the internet. The company also provided easy-to-use tools that enabled loan officers to act as consultants to borrowers during the origination process, while speeding up the process. In August 2005, GHR was purchased by Metavante Corporation.  

In 1997 Professor Guttentag began to phase out his teaching at Wharton to focus his efforts more fully toward helping consumers navigate the home loan market effectively.  He began the development of this web site and published The Pocket Mortgage Guide in 2003 and The Mortgage Encyclopedia in 2004, with a second edition in 2010.

In 2011, the professor began the development of a loan origination network on this site, with participating lenders transmitting their prices and underwriting rules directly to the network, with no intermediation by loan officers. The many advantages this has for borrowers are discussed in Why Shop Here: Superior to Lead Generation Sites.

In 2013, a similar network was developed for HECM reverse mortgages, which he designated as “Kosher” -- See Comparison of Kosher and Standard Reverse Mortgages. This was later extended to a web site exclusively directed to reverse mortgages. See https://www.mtgprofessor.com/Kosher/home.html.

More recently, Professor Guttentag turned his attention to not-very-affluent retirees, a rapidly growing segment of the population, with large numbers of them worried about outliving their money. With Allan Redstone, he developed a third web site to meet their needs. It is called the Retirement Funds Integrator (RFI) and it went online November 8, 2021.

RFI constructs superior retirement plans by 1) integrating financial asset management, deferred annuities, and - for homeowners - HECM reverse mortgages; 2) providing the best competitive prices in very imperfect markets; and 3) segregating a complex decision process into an initial “self-serve” phase designed for direct use by retirees, and a second phase managed by a trained and licensed advisor. Details are available at Integrating Retirement Plans – It Is Long Since Overdue. As with his other web sites, advertising is not permitted.