Welcome to our Summer 2022 newsletter, it’s hard to believe that another quarter has flown by, but as usual, we have lots of news to share.
Let me start by introducing two new colleagues. Laura Gibson is our new membership business development manager and Jennifer Logue is our new executive PA and admin support colleague. We wish them the very best of luck in their new roles and are all thrilled to welcome them to the team. We believe by bringing expertise in-house we can ‘push the connections’ and add more value for members for less! Members can read more about them in the Council update.
The other big news follows our 28th annual general meeting (AGM) which took place in London, on June 22. As many of you know, a special resolution was passed during the AGM that will see the Council adopt a new governance structure.
The new structure will see the Council move to a board made up of three wholly independent non-executive directors, including our Chairman, David Burrowes, but there will be more opportunities for members to get involved than ever before, on member-forums and an overarching member panel, which you can read about here.
The recruitment campaign for the new directors is almost complete and we have already moved to a transitional board, but that means several directors have stepped down, namely Paul Barber, Paul Carter, Dave Harris, Dan Baines, Matt Burton, Claire Singleton, Matt McGill, Chris Pond. We are extremely grateful for their hard work and dedication, and I would like to express my gratitude to them on your behalf.
It is fitting that in this edition, we reveal the findings of our latest member survey, in which 93% of respondents backed the introduction of the fifth product standard. This incredibly high favourability was also reflected in the 97% of respondents who strongly agree/agree the Council’s protections and safeguards enable consumers to trust that equity release is safe and reliable.
In addition, this important survey, highlighted that 75% of respondents believed Council membership was essential! We continue to seek to evolve our services to provide our members with more value. Many thanks to Standard Life Home Finance for sponsoring this survey, which you can read here.
Publication, of this newsletter follows that of our latest market data for Q2, where £1.6bn of property wealth was released. You can read what some of the industry’s most influential figures had to say about this record breaking quarter, which suggests the industry may achieve £6bn of sales this year.
Elsewhere in the newsletter: Solicitor Peter Barton shares some of the details of a working week which saw him launch his new business in the regular “Week in the Life” feature; tech-firm Biscuit Tin explains how its digital vault can help with later life admin; Rest Less write about the great unretirement, and Canada Life ask if we are doing enough to prepare for later life care?
There’s also the usual Council news, member news and a round up of all the latest members to join the Council since the last newsletter. A couple of those new members are featured in our Class of ’22 article. While Tom McPhail from Lang Cat provides a short introduction to his latest publication – House Rules, one of a number of important reports which have been published recently about our sector.
As many of you will know, the Council is celebrating 30 years of setting standards so we caught up with four members who signed up for membership recently during this landmark period. You can read the article here.
Finally, I wanted to say how impressed I was by the significant attendance at our latest Webinar with FOS, which members can watch again together with Q&As from that session here. Please do sign up to attend our Webinar with Deloitte on Consumer Duty on 15 September here. We look forward to hosting a further webinar on vulnerability with StepChange for members following.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have managed to find time to enjoy a relaxing holiday this Summer!
Jim Boyd, CEO
