The reverse mortgage generation is already at your door

A generation of older Australians is arriving at care decisions with less financial cushion than the system was built for. Providers can’t give financial advice. But they can do a lot more than hand over a brochure.

There’s a number buried in a Deloitte survey that should stop people in their tracks.

Thirty-four per cent of new reverse mortgages in Australia are now taken by people under 70.

Not retirees in their 80s, cashing out equity as a last resort. People in their late 60s — some still working, some newly retired — mortgaging their homes because the gap between what they have and what they need has arrived ahead of schedule.

This isn’t primarily a financial story. It’s a care story. And it’s heading straight for the sector.

The myth the system was built on

Australia’s aged care funding model was designed around a particular kind of older person. Someone who’d spent decades accumulating assets — most likely property — and arrived at the point of needing care with a home to sell, a super balance to draw on, and genuine capacity to contribute toward the cost.

That person still exists. But they’re sharing the waiting room with someone different now.

The cost-of-living pressures of the past few years didn’t spare older Australians. Renters who never owned. Retirees who drew down super earlier than planned. People who went through a divorce in their 50s and split an asset base that was never going to stretch far. Women who stepped out of the workforce for years as carers, carrying the super gap that follows.

The person arriving at a care decision in 2026 — for themselves, or sitting across from your intake team — may have done everything right and still be stretched in ways the system doesn’t have a clean answer for.

The bind providers are in

Providers notice it. They see it in the hesitation when fees are explained, in adult children doing mental arithmetic in real time, in questions that circle and circle without landing on the thing they’re actually asking.

Can Mum afford to be cared for properly?

The people best placed to have that conversation are legally prohibited from giving the advice that would actually help. Providers cannot recommend financial strategies. They cannot advise on whether to sell the family home, suggest how to structure assets, or weigh one funding option against another. That territory belongs to licensed financial advisers — specifically, those holding an FAAA Aged Care Specialist designation, a credential requiring 30 CPD hours and nine ongoing hours of training each year.

So what happens instead? A referral card. A mention of Services Australia’s free Financial Information Service. A polite suggestion to speak to a financial adviser — as though most families at this point in the journey know which kind of adviser they need, can easily find one, or have the $1,500 to $5,000 a proper engagement costs. The gap between you need financial advice and you can actually get it is wide. Providers stand at the edge of it every single day.

What providers can actually do

The legal boundary is real, but it doesn’t mean standing back and watching families flounder.

The new Aged Care Act actually requires providers to answer questions about costs clearly and honestly. Silence or evasion now breaches the Act. That’s the floor. The question is what leadership looks like above it.

A few providers have started building genuine referral relationships with aged care financial specialists — not a number on a brochure, but a known person who understands the provider’s context and will offer families a free introductory conversation. Some train intake staff to tell the difference between someone confused about the system (almost everyone) and someone in real financial distress who needs a different kind of support. Some have started proactively sharing information about OPAN’s free independent advocates — particularly useful now that pricing confusion under Support at Home has left some recipients receiving fewer care hours than expected.

None of that crosses the line. All of it requires a choice to genuinely hold the moment rather than deflect from it.

The harder question

There’s a version of this conversation that ends in policy. The means-testing model was designed for a generation with a different asset profile. Subsidised financial advice for aged care planning — the way legal advice is sometimes subsidised as a matter of consumer protection — is worth a serious conversation.

There’s also a version that sits inside every care organisation right now. When someone sits across from your team and the real question beneath all their questions is whether they can afford to age with dignity — what do you do with that?

The answer starts well before the financial adviser referral card comes out.