Home equity finance specialist Household Capital is aiming to establish a one-stop shop for home equity access, with the acquisition of Pension Boost. Pension Boost, which was established in 2019, helps retirees navigate their way through Centrelink and access the government’s Home Equity Access Scheme. Household Capital chief executive Josh Funder said: “Household Capital and Pension Boost have a common starting point. Customers will be able to come to us and understand what home equity options are available to them.” Funder is bullish on the prospects for the home equity sector, despite reports that only a very small proportion of retirees have used it. He said the rising cost of living would add to existing financial pressure on retirees from small superannuation balances and increasing longevity. Household Capital is forecasting that home equity retirement funding will reach a record A$750 million in 2023. When Household Capital was launched in 2019, it had $100 million of funding from ME Bank. Last year it announced a $300 million funding arrangement with Citi as the senior funder and IFM providing the mezzanine funding.  Funder said that since then the funding has been expanded. It is hard to get an accurate picture of the market. APRA data, which shows total reverse mortgage balances of $2.1 billion and a steady decline in recent years, only cover authorised deposit-taking institutions. Most ADIs have stopped selling reverse mortgages. Heartland Group, which claims to be the biggest lender in the market and is not an ADI, has a reverse mortgage book worth $1.2 billion. At June 30, the government’s Home Equity Access Scheme (formerly the Pension Loan Scheme) had 6041 borrowers owing a total of $138 million. The 2020 Retirement Income Review was positive about the use of home equity finance, recommending that the government do more to educate people about how to set up a retirement income plan, including the use of reverse mortgages and other equity release products. It said that using relatively small portions of home equity can substantially improve retirement incomes. For example, using the Pension Loan Scheme to add $5000 to annual income would increase the income replacement rate of the median income earner by 10 percentage points. The review estimated that withdrawing $5000 a year would mean that retirees still have about three-quarters of the value of their home at age 92, for a house worth $500,000 at retirement. Retirees with higher value homes would maintain even higher proportions of home equity while still benefiting from significant improvements in replacement rates.