Leaving aside those who may have ‘grandfathering’ qualifications, the route to CeLM nowadays is to firstly hold CeMAP and then to pass both module two of CeFA entitled ‘Investments’ plus the specific lifetime paper.
I felt after doing this that my knowledge of retirement planning and also means-tested allowances wasn’t really as good as it should be to work in the lifetime market. I therefore took it upon myself to finish off the full CeFA qualification as this meant passing papers based on protection, and retirement planning. As a consequence, I feel my knowledge to advise on lifetime mortgages is now much more rounded. My recommendation would be to make the CeFA papers on protection and retirement planning a mandatory part of the CeLM qualification, possibly by dropping that related to investments.
On a related issue, that regarding home reversions, there really is a need for training material leading to a qualification that can make the case why and when a home reversion should be preferred to a lifetime mortgage. My personal view is that the window for making a home reversion case is rather small, especially if consideration is given to providing for the potential costs of long-term care.
I look forward to the new lifetime qualification and syllabus in 2007. The ifs has made a good start with the existing CeLM and as an ifs member for over 30 years, I’m confident of its ability to rise to the challenge.
Yours,
Pat Fitzpatrick
Via e-mail
