Age Partnership is on a recruitment drive to help expand its face-to-face equity release advice service this year, with recent figures revealing that lending of the loans increased by almost a third.
FTAdviser revealed the firm had launched a face-to-face offering alongside its existing telephone service in January of last year. The retirement specialist said the service has seen “unprecedented demand” since being rolled out.
As a consequence Age Partnership is looking to recruit more field-based equity release advisers across the whole of the UK due to a high demand for home visits since launch last year.
This time last week, new figures from Key Retirement showed that lending in the equity release market increased 30 per cent to £1.38bn last year, from £1.06bn for 2013.
Dan Baines, sales and marketing director at Age Partnership, stated: “The growth of our face-to-face equity release forms a key part of our expansion plans and we look forward to welcoming new advisers to the team in 2015.
“We’re genuinely excited about applying these principles to the growth of our field-sales team over the months ahead, and we’re determined to deliver a service that sets the standard.”
At the start of this week Legal and General announced a proposed acquisition of New Life Home Finance for £5m, enabling it to enter the lifetime mortgage market.
Bernie Hickman, managing director of L&G’s individual retirement business, said: “Over 60s in the UK have nearly £1,300bn in housing equity and we believe lifetime mortgages will become an increasingly popular way for many people to supplement their retirement income.
“Legal and General’s acquisition of Newlife allows us to participate fully in this market, which we believe has huge potential. With close to £40bn of annuity assets, we have considerable capacity to provide future funding in this growing market.”
peter.walker@ft.com
