The equity release referral panel which launched in October last year, will add four lenders to its direct offering: Legal & General Home Finance, Hodge Lifetime, Pure Retirement and More2Life by the start of March and said it plans to add more lenders soon.
Marie Catch has been appointed panel lending relationship manager and the move follows the club’s new-build panel launch last year.
L&G mortgage club director, Jeremy Duncombe, (pictured) said the club’s momentum in this area all comes back to the drive to enable brokers to offer holistic advice and address this customer need.
“If brokers ignore the non-core opportunities like lending into later life, in two or three years they could find themselves outmanoeuvred by market disruptors like lenders going direct, better technology, comparison sites or even brand-new players offering something different,” he said. “There are challenges coming,” he added.
Last October, the firm underwent a rebrand to Legal & General Partnerships in a bid to synergise its various partnerships from mortgage and protection advice, to housing, including build-to-rent and equity release lending through L&G Home Finance after it bought NewLife in April 2015.
Yesterday, its equity release lending arm, L&G Home Finance launched a drawdown lifetime mortgage with the first-ever sub-5% rate offered by an equity release lender.
Nigel Waterson, chairman of the Equity Release Council, called the product ‘a genuine game-changer for our sector’.
“Product innovation of this sort together with the industry standards will further mainstream equity release in 55 plus financial planning,” added Waterson.
The L&G Home Finance division achieved £201m worth of lending in 2015, with £99m lent in Q4, handing it a market share of 22%.
Figures published by the Equity Release Council in January showed that lifetime lending reached £1.61bn in 2015, a 17% increase on 2014.
