The event drew a wide audience and included a variety of insightful and informative seminars.
The Bristol MBE event scheduled a number of seminars from key players in the industry, and interesting points were raised about the past, present and future of the mortgage and specialist finance industry.
Michael Nicholls, relationship director at the London institute of Banking and Finance, explained the current structure and importance of the CeMAP qualification.
Nicholls highlighted how current and prospective students receive considerable support through online learning resources and how the difficulty of multiple choice questions in the current examinations should not be underestimated.
The current CeMAP qualification covers the constantly changing regulatory landscape, and allows learning acrossa range of areas such as specialist lending products, affordability, income, and expenditure according to Nicholls.
Jason Ruse, head of Key Partnerships, followed by outlining the opportunities of equity release, with Key Partnership statistics showing lending has reached a record £614m.
Ruse argued that retirement in today’s world has a lot of flexibility and choice, and many are deciding to phase into retirement rather than choose a specific date, which is having an effect on statistics and reports.
Many more retirees are spending money on helping relatives get onto the property ladder according to Ruse, with 22% also spending their money on clearing outstanding mortgages.
Ruse also advocatedusing lifetime mortgages todeliver more flexibility and options, as more people are living longer and are "facing a retirement they don’t necessarily want".
The seminars rounded up with a panel debate where Neil Molyneux, head of sales and marketing at Masthaven and Andrew Lazare, founder and managing director of Mint Bridging, discussed how the General Election will have an impact on the specialist finance market.
Molyneux highlights that the specialist market is good at adapting to any outcome and thinks no differently to the election result.
Both Lazare and Molyneux were undecided about what that outcome might be, however warn of the scaremongering and tactics used by each party during the campaign and say the true results and impacts will only be seen after the result is revealed.
