Raising customer awareness and adviser numbers big challenges for later life industry (National Later Life Adviser Conference)

25 June 2019

Raising customer awareness about lending options and solutions, plus increasing the number of advisers active in the sector, were raised as two of the major challenges the later life market needs to address in the months and years ahead.

Speaking as part of a panel debate of experts at today’s National Later Life Adviser Conference, in association with the Equity Release Council, which is taking place at the Madejski Stadium, Reading, Will Hale, Chief Executive Officer at Key Advice, raised both areas as ones to work on.

“A significant percentage of people’s net wealth is tied up in property,” he said. “40p in every pound, for those aged over 55. So, the big job we have is to normalize the use of housing equity. Marketing and advertising directly to consumers will play an important role in increasing awareness and we need more brands to step up to the plate in this area, especially the big, high-street banks.”

Hale also argued that a lack of advisers needed to be overcome: “There is a lack of advisers specialising in this sector. To that end, we need to highlight the opportunities available and to get them through all the routes there are to market.”

Jacqueline Berry, Founding Director of My Care Consultant, said the Government also had a major role to play “in terms of providing access to information to consumers”. She said that the amount of information and the different levels of quality, made it difficult for consumers to know where they should go for the right information and to receive quality advice.

Product innovation and development was another area highlighted by panel participants which could ensure the sector worked for more consumers. Hale suggested that innovation would come from the broader later life sector, pointing to the Retirement Interest-Only (RIO) sector and the hybrid mortgage space.

James Young, National Account Manager at Hodge for Intermediaries, said that he anticipated RIO products playing a greater role in the market in the future. “We have to remember that RIOs are effectively a year old,” he said. “It’s a developing product with, I think, 15 lenders currently active in the space. The underwriting will get better over time as lenders get more experienced in this area. RIOs’ pricing is probably too closely linked to lifetime mortgage products, however I would expect that to differentiate over time.”

The panel outlined how important training and development, plus proving ongoing competency, should be to advisers active in the sector. “One of the issues we have is that advisers are qualified to offer equity release advice but they are not regular market participants,” said Hale. “They then dip back into the market occasionally and they may not be au fait with all the up-to-date developments that have taken place recently.”

Ben Lockyer, BDM at Farani Taylor, agreed that regular training and improving market knowledge was highly important for advisers, plus he argued that having a network of specialists to introduce clients to, was also vital. He said: “Training is absolutely essential in terms of the areas you can advise on, and also in terms of the areas where you can pass clients onto other specialists.”