As part of her testimony Rozario said: “There is a lack of information for the consumer to be able to make any choices.
“The products available could certainly develop and evolve if we had more certainty around state benefits and the impact of equity release upon state benefits and around the long term care market.
“Research from the Pensions Policy Institute has found that there is £250bn in housing equity that could be released immediately, and at the moment the equity release market is at just under £1bn a year.”
Rozario said that a very small amount of this equity actually went towards paying for care, one of the reasons for this being that people had certain views on equity release.
She added: “They are not necessarily aware of how products have changed or the safeguards that are available and that they could actually use this equity to pay for domiciliary care and potentially long term care.
“At the moment, it is an awful journey for those in need of care to go through to get help, from sourcing its costs to looking after family members who need care. We need one government department to take ownership of equity release.”
