In the last few weeks, we have seen an alarming piece of research about mortgages and the elderly yet I have heard very little from the financial services industry. It may be somebody else’s problem but is that because of a failure of regulation.
A report by the Personal Finance Research Centre and the International Longevity Centre UK suggests that one third of the over 70s with mortgages have interest only mortgages with no repayment vehicle.
Four in ten of the oldest mortgaged households have at least one interest-only mortgage without a linked investment to repay the loan, compared with six per cent among the under 55s – a reflection of changing times and changing policies.
There are other results in this survey that suggest a failure of the mortgage industry or a failure of a banking system for allowing people to keep remortgaging into higher debt which at best saw borrowers marking time on these loans, when they should have been getting ..read more