Nick Austin, commercial director, life at LV=, joins the council’s main 12-strong board of directors, alongside five existing directors who have all been reappointed to serve an additional two years. Those are Deian Jones, managing director at Hodge Lifetime, Paul Carter, CEO at Pure Retirement, Dave Harris, CEO at More2Life, Paul Barber, CEO of Retirement Bridge and Roger Marsden, managing director of Retirement and CEO of Equity Release at Aviva.
The six appointed directors will serve alongside Steve Ellis, managing director at Legal & General Home Finance, and Richard Overson, group director at Key Retirement, who were both elected to the board in 2017 for two-year terms.
They will also be joined by Paul Turner, managing director, Retirement Lending, International and group development at Just Group, who will sit as a board member designate in place of his colleague Steve Kyle, risk and compliance director at Just Group, who has decided, following the latest AGM, to step down from board after 13 years of service.
The ERC Board
The council’s main board is completed by chairman David Burrowes, Donna Bathgate its chief operating officer and Chris Pond its chairman of the Standards Board.
The ERC has seen the market double in size in two years to £870m of lending in Q1 2018 and has a growing membership base of over 220 firms, up from 160 in spring 2017.
The council has also evolved the role of members on the Standards Board to ensure it captures the different perspectives of adviser firms and reflects the growing number of associate member firms.
David Wright, equity release specialist at Sixty Plus, will sit as the smaller adviser firm representative while Dean Mirfin, technical director at Key Retirement, serves as a representative of a larger specialist broker firm and Nikki Smith, head of compliance monitoring and development at Just Group, will represent providers on the Standards Board for 2018-19.
They join Claire Barker, managing director at Equilaw as solicitor representative; Mel Kettle, director of client services at Gateway Surveyors as associate member representative; and independent members Liz Barclay and Jim Dredge who will all serve for an additional year under the continued chairmanship of Chris Pond.
Standards Advisory Panel
The council has also created a Standards Advisory Panel – an group of industry practitioners that will specifically advise the Standards Board, acting as an important sounding board on consumer issues and experiences.
David Burrowes, chairman of the Equity Release Council, said: “The council is committed to leading and setting standards in the equity release market and these appointments mean we continue to have the highest calibre of industry expertise to represent our members and ensure the products and services we provide are designed to serve customers’ best interests.”
He added: “I would also like to thank Steve Kyle for his years of dedicated service to the board and Susan Jeffrey, David Forsdyke and Kate Davies for their valuable service to the Standards Board. Their collective passion and dedication to the industry has been invaluable and I wish them all the best with their new commitments.”
