Andrea Rozario is to step down from her post as director general of the Equity Release Council at the end of February.

She is to pursue “new challenges”.

Rozario said: “When I joined SHIP over five years ago, it was a shared goal between myself and the previous Chairman Laurie Edman’s to broaden out membership of this long standing organization to enable it to represent the industry as a whole and not simply providers. Against the backdrop of economic turmoil, it has been a challenging but enormously gratifying process working with the Board to build the new structure which led to the launch of the Equity Release Council in May 2012.

“Following this success, it is now time for me to seek other challenges but I am confident that with an increased membership, more resources and a wider remit, The Council will go from strength to strength in the future.”

Nigel Waterson, chairman, The Equity Release Council added: “Andrea has worked extremely hard to build an organisation which truly represents the entire equity release sector, while crucially maintaining and widening the SHIP standards. The launch of the Council has been a huge success and we are ideally positioned to continue to build the organisation in the future.

“The board and I are immensely grateful to Andrea for her contribution to the success of the Council, and wish her well as she looks to take up new challenges in the future.”