At a time when some in the equity release market have reported difficulty, 55Plus has been on a journey of expansion.
Jan Johnson, the firm’s founder and director, set up the company in 2008 in the midst of the financial crisis.
Johnson is keen to spread the message that equity release can be a solution for a lot of homeowner’s financial problems.
In the past six months the company has grown from a team of eight to 18 advisers, offering equity release advice on a national basis across England, Scotland and Wales.
Johnson’s approach to the business has been heavily influenced by her 25 years as a mortgage adviser with Santander.
“Just short of 25 years I got to a point where I thought I’ve had enough. It was just target driven and you were so constricted with what you could tell people. I wanted to create a business where we were doing the right thing and offering good service,” Johnson told FTAdviser.
“When I started the business, it was just myself and it has taken quite a long time to build it,” she added.
The growth 55Plus has achieved in the past six months comes in stark contrast to the experience of some other players in the equity release market in the months following September’s “mini” Budget.
Back in March, Key Later Life Finance laid off 13 per cent of its workforce, with the equity release provider saying last year’s “mini” Budget was to blame.
Likewise, Leeds-based advice firm Age Partnership cut nearly 10 per cent of its staff earlier this year, also citing the former prime minister Liz Truss's "mini" Budget as the cause.
The equity release market experienced a challenging period towards the tail end of last year as a result of rapid interest rate rises and wider market uncertainty.
In the months immediately after the “mini” Budget, product choice in the sector shrunk as interest rates rose sharply and lenders had difficulty pricing products.
In November, the interest charged on equity release products stood around 8 per cent, up from 3.5 per cent just months prior.
Since then, the market has begun to rebound with providers reporting an uptick in activity this year.
However, loan-to-values still remain below where they were pre-September last year and the cost of releasing equity from a home remains higher.
Reflecting on the past few months, Johnson told FTAdviser that the drop in activity seen last year has now rebounded and her view is that “it will never go away”.
“I was in this market when we had the financial crash, this has been a different scenario,” she said.
“It’s such a strong market, there is still a huge amount of lending going on.
"What the problem has been is the public have been generally scared into doing things because they’ve been told there’s going to be a big recession. They’ve been told property values are going to drop, and these haven’t happened to the degree that the press has been putting it out there.”
