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This was the challenge facing Safe Home Income Plans, the first major trade body that aimed to raise standards in the equity release industry.

Launched in 1991, Ship is dedicated to protecting equity release planholders and promoting equity release plans.

Ship emerged only a few years after equity release had already been hit by scandal. In 1988 a home income plan was launched that tarnished the industry's reputation and continues to have an impact to this day.

These plans, which were later banned after leaving many elderly people in severe financial difficulties, involved buying an annuity or some form of investment bond alongside an interest-only mortgage usually at a variable uncapped interest rate. The annuity was supposed to pay off the monthly interest and still provide an income but rapidly rising interest rates in the early 1990s, fixed annuities and falling house prices left borrowers in monthly arrears and with negative equity.

Share appreciation mortgages also emerged in the mid-1990s and delivered another damaging blow. Sams enabled borrowers to release equity by an interest-free loan. In return, homeowners would hand over a slice of the future growth in the property's price to the bank - typically a three-to-one share in favour of the lender. As property prices rocketed, Sam holders owed sums to the bank that far out weighed their initial loan.

More recently groups have been formed for advisers and lawyers working in the equity release sector to face the sector's latest challenge: a surge on demand from pensioners whose investments have failed them. The first is the Promoting Excellence in Equity Release initiative launched by the Personal Finance Society.

Advisers who sign up to Peer are provided with a package of information designed to improve their confidence in the market. The other organisation is the Equity Release Solicitors' Alliance. Formed at the start of summer by six law firms, ERSA provides a forum for discussion and debate on equity release, particularly from a legal perspective.

Andrea Rozario, director general of Ship, said she felt proud of the important role her trade body, which represents 90 per cent of equity release providers, had played in helping to drive up standards in the industry and assert the need for the various players in the sector to come together.

She said: "We are at the beginning of a new dawn for equity release. The fundamental pressures of declining pension contributions, the extent of wealth held in property and an ageing population will drive up demand for equity release solutions and advice.

"The sector needs to grow and it will, especially as the current troubles in the mainstream mortgage market push providers and advisers into finding alternative sources of business."

Ms Rozario said it was vital high standards were maintained and Ship would work together with other organisations that aimed to achieve this.

She said: "The PFS's Peer service and the new Equity Release Solicitors' Alliance are important developments we hope can make a valuable contribution to helping to expand the sector's capacity while at the same time maintaining and improving standards. Ship welcomes any drive to raise the profile of equity release and the standard of delivery from practitioners, but of course we will see the best results if these efforts are aligned and part of a coherent whole."

Claire Barker, a partner for specialist equity release legal service Equilaw LLP, said she conceived ERSA to provide advisers with a route to lawyers who had the necessary "know-how" for equity release plans.

She said: "It is more of a quality stamp than anything else. Advisers can be pretty sure the members know what they are doing. I decided to set up the group because I have had various approaches made to me by solicitors looking to be trained in the area and that is probably because in the market we are in you have got solicitors that are also looking for new income streams."

Ms Barker said it was important ERSA affiliated with organisations such as Ship and the Personal Finance Society in order to help steer advisers towards their services.

She said: "We want their member organisations and intermediaries to know where to look for specialists because one of the biggest barriers in the market is intermediaries have not known where to find lawyers who know how to deal with equity release."

Ms Barker said solicitors generally tried to do their best for the client but there was a general lack of understanding in how equity release products had evolved in the last few years.

She said: "You will get certain solicitors that say to the client the products are dangerous or really expensive or you could lose your house and all of this is not accurate. You also get some that do just one case a year and will charge the earth to do it because you have got to start from scratch with all the paperwork."

Richard Fox, chief executive of the Society of Mortgage Professionals, part of the Personal Finance Society, said Peer had received a significant level of interest since it was launched in early May.

The amount of enquiries about Peer demonstrated the desire of advisers to make sure equity release was handled in professional manner, Mr Fox said.

He said the society would be looking to establish opportunities to work with Ship as the initiative progressed.

Mr Fox said: "Entering into an equity release arrangement is a significant decision and it is important that access to high quality advice is easily available.

"Ship exists to establish lenders adopt high standards by adopting their code of conduct. The PFS has created Peer as a grouping of advisers who themselves

seek to provide credible high quality advice within the framework of a professional body."

For a long time Ship seems to have been the lone independent organisation raising equity release standards.

But with so many new industry bodies appearing, it will be interesting to see if further strength can be added to the sector in numbers