New customers with a joint lifetime mortgage can repay the mortgage without any repayment charges within three years of one of the customers passing away or when Aviva is notified that one of the couple needs long-term care.
A voluntary partial repayment feature also enables new customers to make repayments once they have held the lifetime mortgage for at least a year.
With partial repayments customers can pay back up to 10% of the initial amount borrowed in four instalments each anniversary year, with a minimum of £500 for each instalment.
Clive Bolton, Aviva’s managing director, retirement solutions, said: “We have designed our equity release products to be more flexible as people are increasingly choosing to draw on their housing wealth in retirement.
“Equity release can be used for a variety of purposes, and can be particularly useful where retirees are finding their savings are dwindling or when they have a significant and unexpected expense to meet.
“With the enhancements we’re making, retirees can start paying back their loan if their circumstances change and have more control of how they utilise their overall wealth.”
Property is a key asset for retirees with 76% of over-65s owning their homes outright.
The average age of people taking out an equity release product with Aviva is 70 years.
Aviva’s equity release lifetime mortgages provide loans of at least £15,000, through either a lifestyle lump sum max which provides a lump sum or a lifestyle flexible option, where a lump sum is provided with a cash reserve to drawdown when needed.
The average loan taken from Aviva’s lifestyle flexible option, its most popular equity release product, increased from £25,000 in 2010 to £44,000 in 2013.
