Andrea Rozario, Director General of SHIP, the trade body for equity release, attended and gave evidence at the third evidence session of the Health Select Committee for its inquiry into social care (22 November).  Other representatives called to give evidence came from the Strategic Society Centre, Partnership Assurance and the Association of British Insurers.

The representatives were questioned about the role of the private sector in finding solutions to paying for long term care.

As part of her testimony Andrea Rozario, Director General of SHIP, told the Committee:

“Research from the Pensions Policy Institute has found that there is £250 billion (in housing equity) that could be released immediately, and at the moment the equity release market is at just under £1billion a year.  A very small amount of this equity actually goes towards paying for care, one of the reasons for this being that people have certain views on equity release.  They are not necessarily aware of how products have changed or the safeguards that are available, and that they could actually use this (equity) to pay for domiciliary care – and potentially long term care.

“There is a lack of information for the consumer to be able to make any choices.  The products available could certainly develop and evolve if we had more certainty around state benefits, and the impact of equity release upon state benefits, and around the long term care market.

“At the moment, it is an awful journey for those in need of care to go through to get help, from sourcing its costs to looking after family members who need care.  We need one government department to take ownership of equity release”.