3 Flashcards
For later life planning, what is equity release?
Borrow money against value of home
What are two main types of equity release?
Lifetime mortgages and home reversion plans.
What are the typical reasons for equity release? (4)
- Repay existing mortgage
- Carry out home improvements
- Consolidate debts
- Paying for help around the home
What are the features of lifetime mortgage? (2)
- No monthly repayments.
- Interest accumulates until loan is repaid when person dies or moves into care
For lifetime mortgages, the amount that can be borrowed depends on: (4)
- Value of the property
- Age (the older you are the greater the cash sum that can be released)
- Health
- Meeting the provider’s affordability criteria
What are the main costs associated with equity release? (4)
- Advice fees
- valuation fee
- legal fees for conveyancing
- Application fee
What are the benefits of lifetime mortgages? (4)
- Mortgage + accrued interest only repaid when home sold
- Interest rates are fixed
- ‘No negative equity’ - liability cannot exceed value of home
- can have initial cash lump sum and borrow further if needed
What are the risks of lifetime mortgages? (4)
- Could be more expensive than traditional mortgage
- Consolidating debts over a longer period may mean paying more overall
- May affect tax position and entitlement to benefits
- Estate/inheritance decrease
What is a home reversion plan?
Release equity and remain in the property rent free but the provider purchases all or part of the house
For home reversion plans, the amount received for the part sale of the house depends on: (3)
Property’s value
Age
Health
how much equity is usually released in home reversion plans?
Between 20% - 60% of market value of home
Why are home reversion plan payments usually discounted?
Amount received discounted for rent-free tenure or until person goes into long-term care
What is the average care cost and how fast is it rising? (2)
- Residential care over £34k per year
- Nursing home care £49k per year
- Fees rising at above-inflationary rates
What are the three alternatives to self-funding care home fees? (3)
- There is Local authority funding - if wealth below £23,350
- NHS can cover cost of care home if have complex health needs but hard to get
- Staying at home - depending on the level of care needed
What happens to clients who ‘give away’ assets to avoid care home costs? (2)
- treated as a deliberate deprivation of assets by local authority
- HMRC will assess person’s resources as though they still owned the asset
What are the FCA guidance on vulnerable clients? (5)
1.Act with appropriate levels of care
2. Understanding vulnerability
3. Skills and capabilities of staff
4. Service design, customer service and communications
5. Monitoring and evaluation (ICS)
What is the difference between financial planning and financial advice?
- ongoing process to achieve money and life goals
- one off recommendation in time
What are the six steps to financial planning?
- Establish client relationship
- Collect relevant information
- Analyse information
- Develop investment strategy
- Implement client and portfolio management
- Review and update
What is involved in effective communication? (8)
- Determine whether client requirements are within the range of services offered
- Outline of the process
- Whether advise from other professionals is required
- Establish rapport
- Mix of open and closed questions to establish client needs
- Explain technical jargon
- Listening
- Establish client trust
What helps with establishing client trust? (3)
technical competence, ethical conduct, empathic skills
What information is required to understand client circumstances? (3)
Financial understanding
Socio-economic characteristics
Financial situation
What is included in socio-economic characteristics? (6)
- Gender
- Dependants
- Health
- Lifecycle stages
- Income
- Occupation
What is included in financial situation? (6)
- Tax status
- Retirement arrangements
- Human capital
- Insurance
- Potential inheritance
- Ethical and social investments
What does it mean to be a risk-averse investor?
take the minimum risk to achieve desired return
What are the three main types of risk tolerance to understand client response to risk?
Risk perception - personal opinion
Risk capacity - ability to absorb financial loss
Risk tolerance - willingness to take risk
Which risks are subjective and/or objective?
Risk perception - subjective
Risk capacity - objective
Risk tolerance - subjective and objective
What are the different return expectations? (4)
- Return in line with risk objective
- Real vs. nominal
- pre-tax vs. post-tax
- Desired vs. required return
What are the different types of investment objectives? (4)
- Capital preservation
- Income objective
- Growth of income objective
- Capital appreciation objective
What are the different setting and implementing investment objectives? (4)
- Target replacement income objective
- Benchmark-driven return objective
- Best-efforts basis
- Liability driven return objective
What are the four different types of investment constraints?
- Time horizon
- Liquidity
- Taxation
- Unique circumstances
What are the different types of behavioural biases? (2)
- Emotional biases
- Cognitive errors
What are the sub-types of cognitive errors?
- Belief perseverance biases
- Information processing biases
What are the different belief perseverance biases? (3)
- Cognitive dissonance
- Representative-ness
- Local bias
What are the different information processing biases? (5)
- Anchoring
- Mental accounting
- Framing
- Availability
- Naive diversification
What the different emotional biases? (7)
- Loss aversion
- Overconfidence
- Gamblers fallacy
- Self-control bias
- Investment inertia
- Endowment bias
- Regret aversion
What is Cognitive Dissonance (confirmation bias)?
Look for what agrees with beliefs and reject what contradicts beliefs
What is Representativeness bias?
Classify new information based on past experiences and stereotypes
What is Local (home) bias? (2)
- Tendency to invest in stocks of local companies
- Belief in information advantage of home stocks
What is anchoring?
Use of an initial default number (‘anchor’)
Reluctant to change based on new information
What is mental accounting bias?
Treating one sum of money different to another equal sum of money
What is framing bias?
The process of information is dependent on how the decision is framed
What is availability bias?
Decisions can be biased towards events that come to mind easily
What is naive diversification?
If presented with choices simultaneously, preference to take equal amounts of each
What is loss aversion and implication to investing ? (3)
- avoiding losses > achieving gains
- Hold on to losers
- lock in profits early
What is overconfidence and implication to investing?
- Overestimate own abilities
- Can lead to excessive trading and overestimating expected returns
What is gambler’s fallacy?
Making decisions on the assumption on mean reversion
What is self-control bias and its implication in investing?
- A lack of self discipline
- thinks short-term satisfaction than long-term goals
What is investment inertia?
Status Quo: Do nothing, keep things as they are
What is endowment bias and its investing implication?
- People place more value on assets they own
- Dont want to sell and buy new ones
What is regret aversion?
Actions taken in fear of making wrong decision
What is prospect theory?
Decisions will be based on perceived gains and losses