Author Archives: Alan

  Announcing a bold new step to further ensure the safety of older homeowners who use equity release to raise funds. SHIP, the trade body for equity release, has established a Fraud Working Group to consider the impact of fraud on equity release. This comes ahead of the trade body’s re-launch as a new organisation that will represent the whole of the equity release industry. The primary objectives of the Fraud Working Group will be to bring together SHIP members, advisors and solicitors to implement good practice guidelines across the industry to help ensure every possible step is taken to [...]

Research carried out by LV= reveals 80% of advisers new to the equity release market believe equity release will be considered a mainstream financial product in the next few years.  The majority of advisers consider equity release to be a significant future growth area for their business, with over half of advisers already reporting a recent increase in client interest in equity release products. Advisers believe that the main reason the equity release market will grow is because of their clients’ need to cover their pension shortfall. Nearly a quarter believe that the rise in clients who need to pay [...]

Many Brits have significant equity tied up in their properties, and many more have an insufficient pension pot to fund the lifestyle they want in retirement, writes Christina Hoghton, at AOL Money. So it comes as no surprise that sales of equity release schemes have increased by 10% in the last year, as older homeowners begin to realise the value of freeing up the equity trapped in their properties. According to the trade body for equity release providers, SHIP, almost £200 million was lent in the first quarter of 2012 alone, a significant 10% jump on the same period last [...]

Drawdown equity release sales surged 11% in Q1 2012 to account for 66% of all equity release deals, Key Retirement Solutions data reveals. This is up 11% from the 55% share of all deals sold that drawdown products accounted for over the whole of 2011. Total lending rose 1.7% from £213.48m in Q1 2011 to £217.1m in Q1 2012 and plan sales rose 6.4% to 4,508 in the three months compared with 4,237 for the same period of 2011. Growth in plan sales was nearly four times faster than growth in total lending underlying how increasing use of drawdown is [...]

The industry has spruced up its act, but for many people there are still better alternatives, writes Julian Knight in the Independent on Sunday It’s easy to see why so many people regard their home as their pension. As a country we have £3 trillion – that’s a three followed by 12 noughts – tied up in housing. With just over £1trn of that mortgaged, it’s still an unimaginable sum of clear wealth. Enough, in fact, to bail out a couple of the most spendthrift eurozone countries. But how do you tap into this wealth safely and in the most [...]

Equity release advances by Safe Homes Income Plan (SHIP) members totalled £199.1m in Q1 of 2012, an increase of 10% on the same period last year, when they totalled £181.6m. The number of plans also increased year-on-year by 6% to 4,057 from 3,838 in Q1 2011. Typically, SHIP sees a fall in the number and value of plans sold between Q4 and Q1. This is because festive season holidays and consumer desire to start the year as frugally as possible, hits sales. This year has been no different and the trade body saw a fall of 8% on the last quarter [...]

Turn2us is running Benefits Awareness Month throughout April, a nationwide media campaign to encourage everyone to check their benefits entitlement. The charitable service has highlighted that 13.5m people in the UK live in poverty yet over £19 billion goes unclaimed in welfare benefits each year. Free Benefits Calculator As part of Benefits Awareness Month they have built a free Benefits Calculator to help us find out what financial help we might be missing out on. Just visit Turn2us to use the calculator as well as read their research and statistics about welfare stigma and other barriers to claiming. Really helpful resource, please [...]

When couples first buy houses often everything is jointly paid. Many couples therefore have the terms of the title to the property written in such a way that on the death of one party the house is automatically fully owned by the other. This ownership form in Scotland is called “jointly with the survivor” and in England “joint tenancy”. This form of ownership seems logical and sensible and it is still probably the way most couples take title. However, the older a couple becomes, the more this form of title can perhaps bring with it an unwanted risk. That risk [...]

Good news for older homeowners in the UK. Greater consumer education around the benefits of equity release is vital for market growth in 2012, research among key industry figures carried out by SHIP reveals. Over half of respondents (52%) worried that lack of consumer understanding would hamper the growth of the equity release market and 41% felt that lack of consumer confidence in these products prevented more consumers from using their housing equity. Equity release advisers (63%) were particularly worried about people’s understanding of the products. The single greatest thing that industry figures wished consumers understood was that as their [...]

The government should support the use of equity release in funding retirement says 45% of over 50s, research by Key Retirement Solutions has revealed. More than one in three over 50s said that tax breaks would encourage them to use equity release. The KRS pensioner property equity index revealed that over 65s owned £749.45bn of property without mortgages which could potentially be used to boost retirement income. Support for the use of equity release in retirement has built recently with think tank The Smith Institute and the Financial Conduct Authority chairman Martin Wheatley both backing the use of property wealth [...]