Caroline Noakes

I am not an adviser of, nor do I work for a provider of, but I am a beneficiary of equity release. Our family has gone from property rich but cash short to happily in balance because of a mortgage on the family home. I went to the Later Life Lending conference yesterday to say thankyou.

Jim Boyd and David Burrowes ran the event. I learned how the insurer who looked after us and especially the 9o+ year old matriarch, has benefited from a £1bn securitisation (thanks Sarah Layden). I missed Emad Aladhal of the FCA but hope to have a transcript to pour over this weekend.

Caroline Noakes explained the female point of view as did a preponderance of speakers on the agenda. There is an emotional empathy between women and their properties that is complimentary to men’s with pensions.

Women are often left with properties after a divorce or death of their partner or spouse, too often they have too much property, too little income and a reluctance to trade down. My family’s experience is that a family house where the shortfall in pensions is made up by capital from the home through an insured loan. My mother was typical of elder women’s experience though equity release extends beyond the surviving female.

I realised in my time at this conference that there is too little awareness of what equity release can do and how it can fill the gap between need and what our pensions provide.

I take away from the conference a link to Fairer Finance’s  Retirement Compass, what CEO James Daley  calls the Later Life Finance Index.

It is time we understand the potential of our housing. Not everyone is a house owner but for those who are, you can buy a sausage with a brick (despite what I was told when 43 years ago at my financial planning induction).

There is a point where pensions will not be adequate and for many older people it is when the pension or annuity runs out. How many annuities are set up on a single life basis? How many “pensions” are no more than income drawdown” that doesn’t last the course. How much income from pensions has no inflation protection?

Too many retirements are underfunded while  homes remain an untapped resource. Thanks to all who explained this to me in Church Hall yesterday. It was an event I will not forget.