April 4, 2019

  [transcript] Hi, I’m Andrew Cate. I’m the NSW Reverse Mortgage broker with Seniors First. Today’s lesson is: ‘how to minimise interest cost on a Reverse Mortgage loan.” I’ve helped over 400 seniors obtain a reverse mortgage. And if there’s ONE topic that people always want to talk about, it’s ‘compounding interest’. To recap: Reverse

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October 29, 2018

The Commonwealth Bank Reverse Mortgage will be withdrawn from sale. CBA (and its subsidiary Bankwest) will no longer offer reverse mortgage loans to new borrowers from the beginning of next year. However, it will still continue lending for current borrowers. CBA made the decision to discontinue “Equity Unlock for Seniors” and Bankwest reverse mortgage (Seniors

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September 5, 2018

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced today that he will quickly scrap the Government’s plan to increase the retirement age pension to 70. “We will ratify it next week. The pension age going to 70, gone,” Morrison said in an interview with Today Show. In the 2015 Budget, the Coalition decided to gradually increase the qualifying

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August 28, 2018

As foreshadowed in our last post, the much awaited ASIC Reverse Mortgage Report was released today. This is an important document for all key stakeholders who comprise the Australian Reverse Mortgage ecosystem: Seniors / reverse mortgage borrowers Reverse Mortgage Lenders Reverse Mortgage Brokers Regulators Solicitors Financial advisers Family members of borrowers Centrelink Government I am

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August 2, 2018

Although it is just a bit more than halfway through 2018, we can already say that this year is a big one for the Reverse Mortgage industry. With tighter government regulation, expansion of Pension Loan Scheme (PLS), and the growing market demand, the Reverse Mortgage niche is still a vibrant and stable industry. Government Reverse

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May 16, 2018

I was recently quoted in an opinion piece written by Bina Brown and published by the Australian Financial Review. Entitled “How to use the budget pension loan scheme for aged care help”, the article explores the idea of unlocking the family home as the “fourth pillar” of the retirement income system. The decision of the

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