Four students from Comillas receive the first Pro Bono Challenge with a work on reverse mortgages

The latest data show that reverse mortgages have increased by almost 1,200% in just a few years. Their aim is to provide liquidity to the elderly in order to increase and diversify their sources of income. For this reason, more in-depth regulation is necessary, and this is what four students from the Faculty of Law (Comillas ICADE) have been working on through the university's Legal Clinic, which won the 1st Pro Bono Foundation Challenge.

In this first edition, in which the central theme was the rights of the elderly, the project chosen was "Dignidad en la jubilación: hacia un marco regulatorio de la hipoteca inversa centrado en las personas mayores", which has culminated, thanks to the support of A&O Shearman, CMS Albiñana & Suárez de Lezo and Cuatrecasas, law firms of the Pro Bono Foundation Spain, in a report that will be presented to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Business, as well as to the different market operators.

"Our intention is that this report does not remain in the academic sphere," says Jaime Iglesias, a student of the Bachelor's Degree in Law and one of the members of the winning team from the Jesuit University of Madrid, together with Mónica Encinas, Máximo Puebla and Maite Tormo, students of the Bachelor's Degree in Law and Dual Degree in Law and Philosophy, Politics and Economics (E1 and E5-FIPE). The latter said that "the aim of the work is to propose specific aspects to be reformed or regulated in depth in the Spanish legal system in relation to the figure of the reverse mortgage".

The report analyses the costs of capital consumption, as well as the possibility of implementing reverse mortgages on second homes and the creation of a participatory body to encourage dialogue between all market operators. Among the aspects they propose are the regulation of independent advisors, the protection of heirs and the updating of the Bank of Spain's Access Guide.

The work is focused, above all, on the welfare of the elderly. This project "aims to provide the reverse mortgage with a complete regulatory framework that guarantees legal certainty and helps the reverse mortgage market to flourish in Spain, catalysing the economic and social benefits of the product in favour of the elderly", according to Pilar Navau, lecturer in Financial and Tax Law at the Faculty of Law (Comillas ICADE) and tutor of this project.