Over the last three years, the term ‘Later Life Lending’ has become familiar to most people in financial services but where has it come from and what does it mean?

To answer that, you need to acknowledge that homeownership has undergone somewhat of a revolution over the last fifty years with building societies, banks and other lenders looking at how they can help people to get onto the housing ladder – and maybe even eventually move up it. We’ve seen high LTV products, low LTV products, guarantor mortgages, shared-ownership schemes and all manner of interesting variations on a theme.