Each week, we also round-up the best comments, emails and letters to the site and pick one reader contribution as our Star Letter. This week’s award goes to:
Outdated ideas over equity release are holding homeowners back
For some time, we who operate in this sector have only too well known the problems of public misconception about the product. In addition, the only people who get the opportunity face to face with potential clients are the advisers.
The Equity Release Council, whilst acting as a great organisation for advisers and providers, is not a customer-facing body as such, hence telling those of us on the inside what the issues are, doesn’t deal with the public’s misplaced views.
Why can there not be an initiative by the ERC, fully supported (financially perhaps) by providers and intermediaries, as well as the equity release solicitors community. Full or half-page awareness campaign statements / advertisements could be placed in major newspapers and publications, assuring the general public about the whole concept of equity release and why it could be right for them?
I really do believe that the public would take genuine note of the public appearance of the ERC and statements headed by the words Equity Release Council, as it would, in the eyes of the public, help to legitimise what we do to provide a fantastic service to those who often desperately need it.
It’s all about education – if you want to teach schoolkids about financial awareness, you get into schools and put it in front of them, as is now happening in some parts of the country, at long last.
Well, It’s no different with the retired sector, as this is very new territory to many of them and they are just like school pupils in terms of knowledge and understanding, and are screaming out to be educated – as they have been with computers – just watch those silver surfers go on their iPads etc., now that they’ve been shown there’s little to fear.
We can talk all we like within the confines of the industry – but we don’t advise ourselves, we advise the public and unless they know how and why we are here for them, properly regulated and with a first class commitment to help them achieve what for many would be a better lifestyle and comfort in retirement, etc., then they will go on being uninformed or worse still, misinformed.
So, we either continue to just talk among ourselves, bemoaning the lack of public awareness, or we PUBLICLY do something about it. Cornflakes as a ‘product’ / concept are advertised as a way to eat breakfast – we need to show that Equity Release is legitimately a way to make life more comfortable in later years – the rationale is the same, surely.
Paul Fielding
