Bluestone provides equity release training

Peter McGuinness

Bluestone Equity Release is to offer financial services professionals a Sequal (Senior Australians Equity Release Association of Lenders) accredited training course addressing the area of reverse mortgages.

The move is the first of its kind that has originated from a reverse mortgage lender.

“Education is an area we focus on a lot. This is an evolving market that spans right across all financial professionals and we took the view just before Christmas that we wanted to provide best in class training,” Bluestone Equity Release chief executive Peter McGuinness said.

The course consists of two modules, Industry Training and Product Training, and has been designed to provide all the training necessary about the sector, eliminating the need for Bluestone-accredited introducers to seek additional education elsewhere.

Bluestone-accredited mortgage brokers, financial planners, financial brokers and accountants have been able to access the course free of charge since Monday February 5.

Enrolment requires a one to two hour face-to-face session, and the course is delivered by way of an online facility that takes between two and four hours to complete.

The Sequal accreditation for the program means those individuals that complete the course can apply for formal recognition as a Sequal-accredited reverse mortgage consultant.

However, Bluestone are looking for approval from other professional bodies as well.

“We’ve just received FPA (Financial Planning Association) CPD points approval and we’ve put an application in to the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia for the same,” McGuinness explained.

“We found there was an increasing demand from specialist reverse mortgage writers and financial planners for good quality industry-based training and education,” he said.

“We expect many of the financial planning groups that we deal with will make use of this opportunity,” McGuinness concluded.