IF you asked most people 30 years ago to explain what “equity release” was, they almost certainly couldn’t.
In fact the phrase probably hadn’t even been invented then.
But a bit like social media it is a product of the way we live today and there can’t be many people over 50 who don’t now know about equity release.
Yorkshire firm Age Partnership has capitalised on this successfully and is now a key player in the market providing loans to homeowners against the equity they have tied up in their property.
This week Age Partnership announced it is to create 40 jobs on the back of a tie-up with financial services giant SunLife and plans to take on up to 200 new staff this year.
The Leeds-based company was founded by serial entrepreneur Andrew Thirkill, who once told me started his career in the advertising department of the Yorkshire Post.
His business interests include Age Partnership’s sister company Pure Retirement, which provides home loan mortgage contracts for the equity release market and which was recently named the fastest growing business in Yorkshire in law firm Ward Hadaway’s Fastest 50 Awards.
Announcing the deal with SunLife, he said: “With the rise in house prices over the last 20-years, a significant number of over 55s are now sitting on a large amount of property equity which they can release to enjoy in their retirement years.”
The chief executive of SunLife Dean Lamble added: “We’ve conducted the biggest-ever research into life after 50, with 50,000 people, and we’ve found that today, life after 50 means taking up new hobbies, trying new experiences, starting up new businesses and really enjoying what are fast becoming seen as the best years of our lives.”
As part of the tie-up the two firms have recruited TV presenter Carol Vorderman to promote their service with Andrew Thirkill explaining: “Carol Vorderman was chosen to be the face of SunLife’s Over 55s Equity Release Service campaign, as she was seen as the epitome of someone in their fifties who’s making the most of life, and who can show customers how the benefits of equity release, ‘can really add up’.”
Given that at first glance I didn’t recognise her in the photograph above, I think I can guess what Carol has spent some of her equity release funds on.
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BARDSEY is a picturesque village in between Leeds and Wetherby which holds a claim to have the oldest pub in England in the Bingley Arms.
Its name is said to be derived from its history as a meeting place of druids during the Bronze Age.
I’ve never seen any bards in the village, just a tramp with a Tesco bag.
A couple of Fridays ago Bardsey was full of merriment as it held its annual beer festival and a large portion of the Leeds financial, property and business community decamped to the village hall for an afternoon sampling a range of ales before tackling a Wilsons pork pie and mushy peas.
Think of Glastonbury, but with more tweed and quilted jackets.
All the beers being served from a line of barrels behind the bar are sponsored by various firms who as part of their package, can invite guests.
Ok, it’s not a box at York Races, but I’ll take whatever corporate invite I can get these days.
Each sponsor makes a valiant attempt to drink their own sponsored ale and avoid those of rival firms.
Even if it means trying not to grimace when spending most of the afternoon sipping a chocolate porter that bears your branding.
I was there with Richard Larking and Johnny Crew of Progeny Corporate Law and bumped into lots of other lawyers, accountants, insolvency practitioners and property agents all who claimed to be sponsors.
If you looked hard enough you could just about make out their logo on the commemorative pint glass.
The major sponsor of the event is Reward Finance and the firm’s co-founder Dave Jones is a local who has been instrumental in developing the event into what it is today.
So despite all the other sponsors, it is very much known as “Dave’s do”.
And for one afternoon at least, it reminded me of that old Dean Martin quip about his Rat Pack pal Frank Sinatra: “It’s Frank’s world, we all just live in it.”
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MY time at the beer festival was curtailed because I had tickets to the latest performance of amateur dramatic society, the Weeton and Huby Players.
They were putting on a performance of False Pretences, written by Eric Chappell, the creator of 1970s sitcom Rising Damp – Mr Rigsby, Miss Jones et al.
Starring in the play at Almscliffe Village Hall were Neil Muffitt, managing partner of finance recruitment firm Woodrow Mercer Finance and Chris Holland, a former journalist who started and ended his career at the Bradford Telegraph & Argus and in between ran the PR for Bradford & Bingley Building Society when it floated on the stock market.
A typical British farce, Eric Chappell apparently based False Pretences on his 1990s TV series The Bounder starring Peter Bowles and George Cole.
It isn’t up there with Rising Damp and Neil and Chris are no Leonard Rossiter or Richard Beckinsale.
But they did remind me of a young Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
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IT was interesting to read that Santander bank has funded the opening of a new London venue called Swingers West End.
Based in the former BHS flagship store near Oxford Circus, Swingers will offer a range of entertainment to its discerning customers.
As a former colleague of mine used to say, that sounds dead classy.
Well it certainly beats the old Harrogate party trick of throwing your car keys onto a Lazy Susan.
I’d already added Swingers West End to my list of places to visit when next in London and need some “me time” after high level meetings with City lawyers and perusing the National Gallery.
That was before I saw that Swingers in is fact an indoor crazy golf “concept” run by a business called the Institute of Competitive Socialising and will contain two nine-hole golf courses, two bars and street food from four different outlets all set around a “1920s English Riviera theme”.
There is already one called Swingers City open next to the Gherkin building.
OK, given that information, Swingers is no longer as high up my list of places to visit when I’m next in London.
I’ve led a relatively sheltered life and despite meeting the eponymous owner of Stringfellows last year, I’ve never visited his famous venue.
I was once tempted into the Spearmint Rhino gentlemen’s club in the West End but only really to drown my sorrows after Derby County lost the 2014 Championship play-off final.
And because the text from a friend of mine who was already there suggested it was a relaxing and welcoming place for a stressed out business executive to unwind.
#metoo
Have a great weekend.