ERC chairman Nigel Waterson (pictured) also said there was a case for revisiting how the exam system for equity release advisers was structured, which requires professionals to sit both a mortgage advice and equity release exam.
“Partly because of the new guidance regime that’s coming in on the back of the pension reforms, quite a lot of people are going to need holistic advice right across the waterfront; covering pensions, equity release and tax, all combined,” he said.
“So I certainly think there is scope for talking to people like the Ifs (Institute of Financial Services) and the CII (Chartered Insurance Institute) about qualifications, and indeed the regulator.”
Waterson explained it was “early days” for the group and the membership had not yet been finalised. The working group’s first meeting took place last week and featured representatives from a number of the council’s organisations.
“We’ve been having some pretty robust growth in the last couple of years but there are two aspects we’re [the group is] going to focus on. One is trying to ensure that more advisers get into equity release because we don’t want to experience a capacity crunch,” Waterson said.
“Secondly, we’ll be looking at ways to raise the profile of equity release more generally so that people see it as a natural option to consider when they’re planning for retirement.”
Lending in the equity release market reached pre-recession levels in 2014, surpassing the market’s previous high in 2007 by 14% to £1.38bn.
Waterson said the new working group had no specific market target for 2015 but hoped to exceed last year’s results.
“As far as I’m concerned the sky’s the limit. We hit £1.4bn last year and had 21,000 new customers, we should be growing even faster this year, not least because we’ve got some large new providers coming into the market like L&G. Of course equity release is going to be increasingly attractive because of the tightening of criteria for mainstream mortgages and older people.”
