Scott Burman from Pure Retirement recently delivered a presentation at the Later Life Lending Summit. Read below to find out more about how later life lending is evolving as a mainstream financial planning tool, shaped by shifting customer demographics, preferences, and behaviours.
Nothing in life ever truly stands still, and this is especially true when it comes to customer profiles in a sector that has made great strides toward becoming a mainstream financial planning tool.
Age, property value, gender, and marital status all have the ability to affect how applicants interact with later life lending – and not always in the ways we’d expect.
Having looked at our own customer data who, for example, would have predicted that owners of properties under £250,000 would’ve been more likely than usual to release funds for home improvements (arguably an aspirational reason), while higher-than-usual levels of debt repayments were seen among owners of properties of at least £850,000?
Similarly, having a knowledge of other key demographic trends – such as women currently making up 70% of all single life applicants and getting younger – can help us as a wider industry achieve the best outcomes and meet a diverse range of needs.
Lifetime mortgage customers are, you’d hope, going to evolve as later life lending continues its journey toward being a mainstream retirement planning tool. Understanding the market’s audience, and the way it’s evolving, will be key in meeting customer needs and further widening its appeal.
Customers have undoubtedly become ever-more sophisticated, both in terms of their appetite for effective retirement planning but also in their desire to lead more active later years than previous generations and their unprecedented levels of tech-savviness. As a result, understanding them becomes ever more important if we’re to deliver the best outcomes and continue to innovate in a way that meets their needs.
