Stuart Wilson from Air Club casts his eye over the economy and its impact on later life borrowers
Though the stamp duty holiday concluded at the end of Q3, the market will continue to feel its impact long into the new year and beyond.
When it comes to what advisers want from their partnerships – whether lender/provider/solicitor/packager – you tend to be able to break the response down into two key areas, speed and efficiency.
At a recent ‘Breakfast with Stuart’ event, the discussion turned to the extent to which advisers in our space should have knowledge beyond the later life market after I’d made the comment that advisers should “train on pensions”.
Although the UK arguably boasts more gender equality in society than ever before, the gender pensions gap continues to be a challenge – especially for older women who may not have enjoyed the social and economic freedoms that today’s graduates expect.
We are an industry sometimes inundated with statistical analysis, some of which can often seem utterly contradictory, but for the most part can be informative and – certainly from a later life lending perspective – can show us the mountains we still need to climb.
It’s notable that within our lending space we have to look rather differently at criteria because, for the most part it’s not the client themselves, their affordability, their income, etc, which is being assessed and underwritten, but the property.
The latest more2life data has revealed that the proportion of over-55s who have been using equity release to fund a property purchase has tripled from 5% in ‘normal’ market conditions to 15% since the outbreak of the pandemic.
Whether this is because of the pandemic and COVID-19 I don’t know, but it seems undeniable to me that there has been a significant increase in the amount of attempted fraudulent activity.
Following a year of unprecedented financial challenges, more than a third of people aged 65 and over are worried they will not be able to maintain living standards in retirement.
