Welcome to the autumn/winter edition of the Council newsletter, I hope you are keeping safe and well.
Let me start by e-introducing you to the latest colleague to join the Council. Vicki Clark is our new board and governance support associate. She has a strong background in corporate administration and we believe this role will bolster our already experienced team.
Vicki’s appointment means the Council has doubled its staff to eight, in the last two years. Naturally, we also draw support from various professional services and agencies, but our aim is to bring expertise in–house, so that we can provide more services and value for you, for less. Nevertheless, I hope you will agree that the Council is making remarkable strides for an organisation of its size.
That view is certainly borne out in the Council’s performance. This year we have seen the number of firms within membership grow by 17% to reach 661 while the number of registered individuals has grown by 13% to 1,572. That means membership in both categories has doubled in the last three years. In these challenging times the Council strives to provide you with improved and evolving services and value to support your businesses and customers.
Traffic to our website and in particular the members’ lounge has surged this year and assets like the competency framework, the adviser guide and the consumer guide have been downloaded in their thousands. Member engagement has also been high with record numbers of participants to webinars, surveys and the consultation on the next iteration of our Standards, due to be implemented early next year. I am also delighted that we have been able to provide you with more services ranging from our regulatory bulletins to political blogs, which I know you welcome.
In addition, I want to thank the record number of members who have signed up to support our working groups this year. We are so grateful for your support and we all benefit from your expertise and experience, which so many members have given freely to our Council.
Year-to-date media profile for the Council is the highest it’s ever been with an increasingly positive sentiment towards equity release in the press. But perhaps most tellingly, our Q3 market data, issued in October, suggest that by now the market that is underpinned by the Council’s rigorous Standards is already likely to have topped the £4bn mark. Official confirmation will come when we issue our Q4 and final year data, due in January.
However, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let me assure you that there will be no let–up in activity here at the Council, as the year draws to a close. On that note, work is underway to finalise and publish our new standards, in the New Year. And the third in our series of technical webinars took place yesterday, which members can view here. The webinar looks at state benefits and equity release and the series comes in response to our spring member survey, in which respondents called for this technical content. Our second member survey of the year is currently live and respondents will once again be entered into a prize draw for a £250 Fortnum and Mason hamper. Members can find out more about the webinar and the member survey here.
We’ve also seen further coverage of our Home Advantage report in the trades as well as the Daily Mail, Express and Telegraph this week, in a story focused on the rise of ‘delayed homeownership’ which means many people no longer expect to pay off their mortgages before they retire and may use later life mortgages to support their finances. Read it here.
Elsewhere in the newsletter you can read about the importance of independent legal advice, with comment from some of the leading legal minds in the sector, in an article kindly supported by Pure Retirement. And Stuart ‘the cycling adviser’ Borthwick shared some of the details of his working week, in our week in the life of feature. There is also news of a thought-provoking campaign to support clients who are hard of hearing and an article from one of our members, Ruth Norman, who we had the pleasure of meeting in a regional meeting in Leeds a few weeks ago, who has had six referrals from our member directory in a month!
Naturally, you can also find the usual Council update, member news and political insight as well as a round–up of what some of the leading industry figures had to say about the Q3 market data.
Thank you for reading and please stay safe.
Jim
