Why equity release qualifications need a considerable revamp

I recently moved house and can pretty much confirm a survey by Legal & General last year in which Brits ranked moving home as the most stressful life event you can go through.

Even when you work in the property industry, and fully understand what the process is, what’s going on, and you have a level of knowledge and oversight most other people don’t have, it can still be a surprise just how challenging a move can be.

Perhaps something for those vocal advocates of downsizing as a catch-all solution to the UK’s housing market supply issues to take note of? Most older people would much rather stay put than go through what they know is going to be a stressful experience.

Anyway, I digress. One of the ‘joys’ of moving is working through all that ‘stuff’ you have around the home, and again while this can be a pain, it often throws up some interesting things you’d either forgotten about or hadn’t seen in a while.

One of the documents I found in the process of moving was my original equity release qualification certificate – you’ll know that I’ve been in this sector for a while and this particular document dated back to around 20 years ago.

Clearly, it was important to me to have achieved this, as it set me on my career path, but I was also conscious that I’ve never been retested on my equity release knowledge since then, never had to ‘prove’ how up to date my knowledge is, to show my understanding of a sector and client demographic that has changed immeasurably over that time.

Now, of course, we have ongoing training and competence measures that advisers have to abide by, and I know for a fact that the vast majority of later life advisers would not simply let their knowledge decay over a 20-year-plus period. No-one is working off the back of an equity release market that existed two decades ago.

But the fact that those qualifications from yesteryear can still be relied upon, and indeed I would question whether they have been updated much in the meantime, is not a good look for our sector.

At the moment, and rightly so, there is a lot of discussion about the later life market, advisers, their skillsets, particularly the equity release qualifications, and whether they remain fit for purpose. My own opinion is that a considerable revamp is required to reflect the progress of the sector in the past few years, let alone the last 20.

The current qualifications iteration may not be totally obsolete, but they certainly don’t have the balance right. Still, from my perspective, heavily geared towards home reversion and home income plans, and other areas of the market that are no longer relevant in the modern ‘equity release’ world.

I’m also unsure whether they are as sophisticated and challenging as they need to be, and while I’m not quite saying they are an ‘easy’ fence to jump over, they could certainly be more comprehensive and tricky.

So, I certainly believe that a revamp is necessary and it’s positive to hear many in our sector talking the same way, and I fully expect this to solidify into some much-needed changes in the very near future.

While we await that, of course there are plenty of options for advisers to demonstrate their up-to-date knowledge and abilities in this sector, plus their commitment to lifelong learning that can be demonstrated with clients.

It’s why we launched our Air Academy LIBF-accredited training programme which is a challenging series of modules to work through – I should know, I’ve done it – and we will be adding to these in order to reflect the sector/market changes and the role of the adviser within this.

We currently have eight modules in the syllabus, a ninth will soon be launched and this will be followed by others. Hundreds of advisers have already gone through this and are able to display their accreditation badge, and to my mind, it is a much more rounded offering focusing on all manner of soft skills and holistic knowledge that is vital to the professional life of a later life adviser.

Plus, and this is very important, each year you’ll be retested, meaning there’s no chance of a) resting on your professional standard laurels, or b) you being out of date on the important knowledge that makes you a better adviser and delivers better outcomes to your clients.

A win-win I would say and a focus to keep front of centre through all your future years as an adviser, rather than a qualification certificate you hang on your wall or put in a drawer and forget about.