Interest-only  

Call for radical shake-up of later life mortgage advice

Since then Nationwide and Hodge Lifetime have announced they would be launching residential interest-online mortgage for older borrowers.

Ray Boulger, senior technical manager at John Charcoal, agreed with advice in this area should be reformed.

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He said: "As these various markets converge, and that includes lifetime mortgages, Rios and other mortgages for older borrowers, the ideal solution would be if any of the advisers had the qualifications to advice on all these products.

"[It would be good] to expand the existing exams for all qualified mortgage brokers to include equity release. That is something that is being looked at."

Alternatively broker firms should ensure their staff have enough knowledge about equity release to be able to identify when clients should be referred to specialists, he said.

carmen.reichman@ft.com