Speaking on a panel at the Later Life Lending Event, advisers and lenders discussed the evolving needs they have noticed in borrowers in recent years.
Manjit Kaur, senior later life lending adviser and mortgage and protection adviser at The Mortgage Mum, decided to add lifetime mortgage advice to her services some five years ago, following two decades of working in the industry, after noticing a shift in the needs of older homeowners.
Kaur said: “That’s why I became a specialist in lifetime mortgages. I’d seen a shift in demand away from just traditional mortgages.
“Traditionally, they came to me for short-term borrowing needs – to get by, to do an extension, smaller things.”
But now, Kaur sees homeowners who view their property as an asset they can use in their retirement and want to know how best they can use their wealth.
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“Clients are coming to my meetings with a strategic approach, bringing family to the meeting, they are looking at the choices available, looking at their lifetime asset and what they can do with it,” she noted.
Some of this stems from changes to inheritance tax, which, from April 2027, mean that unused pensions will form part of an estate on death – prompting families to take advice about what they can do with their wealth.
Another big shift observed by Kaur is the continuation of work well past the traditional retirement age – a trend also noted by fellow panellist Darren Deacon, head of intermediary sales at Family Building Society.
“We’re seeing 60-80-year-olds still working as an employee or self-employed with a small business, and this is where I’d provide holistic advice for these clients.
“Because they’re still working, they want to make ad hoc payments [towards a mortgage] and retain their assets,” he said.
Deacon added that the society served borrowers who have very different expectations of their retirement than their parents or grandparents did.
“We’re seeing that people want to spend their house, rather than their wealth,” he added.
More than 150 later life lending professionals gathered at the London Hilton Bankside Hotel to discuss and debate the challenges and opportunities providers and brokers face in 2026.
The shape of future regulatory policies, ways to grow the market in a sustainable way, holistic advice, the role of independent legal advice and changing borrower profiles were prominent themes throughout the day.
