Stuart Wilson has created the Later Life Academy to help advisers working in the equity release sector improve their knowledge and better serve a client’s needs.
He said regulators had left the sector ‘in the wilderness’.
“Regulation has been done in a very slapdash and piecemeal way, when it comes to older customers. Equity release regulation was under MCOB and that was insane.
“They had a chance to move it under RDR and the regulator left it stuck out in the wilderness. Long term care falls under a different set of rules and with annuities many are being done on a non-advised basis.
“If the regulator hasn’t joined them all together then how is the customer at the end expected to get decent advice?”
The firm’s managing partner described the FCA standards for equity release as “low end” and said it did not provide brokers with enough knowledge to make a proper judgement on a client’s financial situation.
“An adviser could give bad advice on equity release through no other fault of their own other than the regulator has separated the related products out into a different set of rules. But they are totally relevant to the customer and can have big, life changing impacts if the advice isn’t delivered properly.
“Broker knowledge at the moment is woefully short as they’re selling equity release and not taking into account all these other things.”
Wilson formerly founded the Equity Release Club for advisers, which he said had grown to around 3,500 members. However, he said just 500 brokers made up the core of the business and hoped the launch of the Later Life Academy could increase knowledge of the equity release and entice more brokers to move into the sector.
But he warned that advisers who dip into the sector occasionally risked losing track of the market.
“One of the big problems in the equity release sector is knowledge decay,” he added. “Somebody is competent in January but because they only sell three or four cases a year does that make them competent the following January? There might have been new products or innovation and they’re not tagged onto it.”
The Later Life Academy will begin accepting applications from brokers from the start of February and will offer training across areas like annuities, investment, will writing and equity release.
