How brokers navigate later-life lending – and why more should

Later-life lending is a market many mortgage brokers still treat as someone else's specialism. The qualification requirements, the perception of complexity, and lingering misconceptions about equity release have kept adviser participation relatively low, even as the case for engaging with older borrowers grows stronger by the year.

The scale of the opportunity is significant. According to the Equity Release Council's (ERC) Q4 2025 market report, total equity release lending in the UK grew 11% in 2025 to £2.57 billion, up from £2.3 billion in 2024. Four in five advisers surveyed by the ERC forecast further growth in 2026. Yet the proportion of mortgage advisers qualified to advise in this space remains small relative to the wider market.

That disconnect is one Tim Spencer (pictured top right), managing director of Optimus Mortgages, told Mortgage Introducer he is keen to address. He views later-life lending not as a niche but as an increasingly mainstream part of the mortgage adviser's role. "Niche is probably a decent word," he said of the market. "Although, it shouldn't be. It should be part of an overall package." He pointed to the shifting reality of mainstream mortgage terms as evidence. "When someone's a first-time buyer starting out, they're starting to look at buying houses – so like 30, for example – and they look at a 40-year mortgage. Suddenly, that finishes when they're 70. That's later life."

A missed opportunity for advisers

Spencer is direct about the gap in the market. "It's a huge market and it's only going to get bigger because there’s an ageing population, and they talk about how much property wealth is out there." He cited rising living costs and the ongoing challenge facing those who want to support younger family members with housing deposits as drivers of future demand. "There's a big untapped market out there. I think it's a bit of a missed opportunity for people."

Reluctance among advisers often stems from the additional qualifications required to advise in this area, alongside a perception that later-life cases are more demanding. Spencer argued the jump is smaller than advisers assume. "It is quite bespoke, but I think all mortgages should be bespoke. With consumer duty and what have you, basically as far as I'm concerned, you're looking after your client."

Andy Shaw (pictured top left), director and head of later life lending at SPF Private Clients, sees no meaningful reticence within his own adviser population, in part because the firm operates at the higher end of the market with a large proportion of clients who already hold complex financial arrangements. SPF did not advise on equity release until 2019. "We didn't feel the products and the pricing were suitable for our clients and we didn't have enough clients within the demographic historically for us to have the expertise," Shaw told Mortgage Introducer.

What's holding clients back from equity release?

Both advisers point to consumer misconceptions as one of the most significant challenges in the market. The association between later-life lending and old-style equity release products – home reversion plans, compounding debt, loss of property ownership – continues to colour how many clients approach initial conversations.

"I think the stigma is still there," Spencer said. "People have not been made aware of these types of products which are available, and if they just think that all their option is basically a home reversion plan, that's pretty terrifying for people." His approach is to reframe the conversation entirely. "The way I try and explain it to clients is it's just treating it like a grown-up mortgage," he said. "You borrow money against your property, you retain ownership of your property – as you do with a standard mortgage – if you choose to. And the grown-up bit is, if you choose to make payments, it could just be the interest-only payment, if you overpay you reduce the debt. But there's no obligation."

Shaw takes a similar line, acknowledging the product's history before explaining what has changed. "The way to approach it with clients, I always find, is to acknowledge and accept the fact that it used to be a murky industry," he said. "It was the wild west and quite frankly it wasn't fit for purpose." He added: "Those horror stories that you would have read in the finance pages of the Daily Mail, they were true at the time, but that's not the world we're in anymore." Shaw pointed to significant improvements in product design, including portability, voluntary payment options, and early repayment charge exemptions on first death for joint borrowers. "Product design now is such that it favours the borrower in most instances, not the provider."

Choosing the right product and the case for collaboration

When it comes to selecting a product for an older borrower, both advisers are clear that there is no universal rule. Shaw, who very rarely advises on retirement interest-only (RIO) mortgages – noting that clients who qualify for them typically also qualify for term interest-only products at a lower rate – said the priority is ensuring all options are on the table. "There's no formal decision tree process that says they must go one way or the other. It's more a question of putting clients in a position where they've got enough information to make their decision from a position of knowledge."

Spencer echoes the same principle. "I genuinely go in there with no preconceived ideas about what product I'm going to sell someone. There's been so many clients who I've gone in there and it's absolutely the wrong thing for. They've gone in thinking they're going to have a lifetime mortgage and I walked away and just told them no, because it's not right for them."

The question of collaboration with pension and wealth specialists is becoming more prominent as the later-life market matures. Shaw, who can see SPF's wealth management team of around 20 people from his desk, acknowledged that cross-firm working is harder to achieve for smaller practices. "If you're a smaller firm, a one-man band or a lifetime mortgage specialist who does nothing else, it becomes a question of working out how you're going to create those relationships that allow you to have a suitably robust signposting and referral piece going on."

Spencer framed it simply: "If a mortgage adviser or an independent financial adviser doesn't do it, they need to talk to an expert who does. It’s as simple as that."

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