With three decades of experience in equity release, Noel Abbott, Chief Customer Officer at Responsible Life reflects on the sector’s transformation. From the early days of home reversions to today’s flexible Lifetime Mortgages and evolving mainstream offerings. While innovation has expanded customer choice, it’s also created new challenges for advisers navigating an increasingly complex product landscape.
I’ve worked in the equity release sector for 30 years now, starting out as an adviser at In Retirement Services back in 1995, when the backwash of poor equity release products was still very real, and then more recently setting up the advice team here at Responsible Life in 2010.
Over the years, I’ve witnessed first-hand the remarkable evolution of product offerings. From the early days of Home Reversions and Home Income Plans to the modern landscape of flexible Lifetime Mortgages, drawdown plans, and plans offering flexible repayments. Mainstream lenders have re-entered the space, offering conventional mortgages alongside Retirement Interest Only mortgages and Lifetime Mortgages with discounts for customers committing to monthly payments.
While this innovation has undeniably improved customer choice, it presents challenges for advisers, comparing diverse product structures and ensuring long-term suitability for customers. At our Equity Release Council Member Panel forum recently, we discussed the difficulty in comparing different product options that don’t appear in one singular sourcing tool. The time it takes to conclude the best option for a customer is increasing as product variants and choices expand.
In 2022, our Regulator reviewed advice practices within several firms and concluded that advice lacked personalisation, failed to consider unique personal circumstances, and had poor record-keeping with insufficient justification of recommendations and the failure to consider all borrowing and non-borrowing alternatives that could address the customer’s needs.
As product choices expand and nuances such as “Interest Rewards” increases, advisers must consider not only the best solution for their customer at the point of sale, but also whether that recommendation will remain suitable in future years, especially as client circumstances and vulnerabilities change. Monitoring and reviewing recommendations post-completion is necessary to ensure that the right recommendation on day one remains the right recommendation in future years.
Providers do an excellent job of looking after customers post-completion, but increasingly, advisers are being expected to support customers, where the provider cannot offer an advice service.
As an industry, we must address a critical gap: who is responsible for maintaining the adviser-client relationship over a 20- 30- year mortgage tenure? With advisers retiring or leaving the profession and providers unable to offer tailored advice, the sector must rethink how long-term customer support is delivered and funded. A more sustainable remuneration model – one that incentivises advisers to maintain an ongoing relationship with their clients – will be key to ensuring consistent high-quality advice throughout the life of the mortgage.
The future of equity release advice must go beyond one-time transactions and move toward a model where ongoing client support is not just encouraged but embedded into the structure of the market itself. Collaboration between funders, providers and advisers is essential to achieving this, ensuring that the customer needs remain the driving force behind industry innovation and regulation.
The views of contributors are not necessarily those of the Council
