Key Partnerships has expanded its adviser support team to respond to client demand for equity release advice.
It has created new partnership account manager (PAM) roles to support its expanded team of business development managers (BDMs).
The PAMs will provide dedicated telephone support, which means advisers will have two points of contact with each PAM paired with a BDM responsible for face-to-face visits.
Jason Ruse, head of Key Partnerships, said it is responding to record growth in the equity release industry with plan sales growing by more than 40 per cent to take total lending to over £3bn.
He said: "Equity release is one of the fastest growing markets in financial services and with six years of double-digit market growth behind us, the potential for advisers to help clients is enormous while expanding their business."
He added: "Pairing BDMs and PAMs will provide advisers with their own personal account team, who will be able to help them take advantage of this growing market."
The new structure aims to ensure referral partners always have support to answer queries and to discuss their opportunities either face-to-face or over the phone.
BDMs will remain the primary face-to-face contact helping advisers understand the market and share best practice while enabling advisers to establish relationships to help them support clients when the need arises.
Key Partnerships is a business-to-business referral service providing a whole of market equity release solution for introducers and their clients, through parent company Key Retirement.
Alex Reynolds, an adviser at London-based Advies Private Clients, said: "I think that any effort to provide more resource and information to advisers is great and is certainly needed in the equity release sector where there are big differences between products and where there is also a lot of innovation at the moment.
"There is certainly demand out there for equity release but I still think it is a bit of a sleeping giant and it will be a while still before it becomes a really large opportunity for adviser.
"That said, it is important for adviser to be aware of the options and if they don’t have the expertise at their firm then looking for a 'partner' is a sensible approach as it is quite a niche sector. It will be important to partner with brokers that are whole of market as some of the niche players have some very interesting products like Octopus."
