Equity Release Supermarket (ERS) has expansion its customer-focussed online tools.

ERS were the first broker to introduce an online calculator and have gone on to launch a range of calculators to assist customers in a way that no other has.

It has added three new calculators – drawdown lifetime mortgage, retirement interest-only (RIO) and income lifetime mortgage – to take the number of free later life lending calculators to nine.

The firm also offers three additional calculators allowing users to analyse various situations to help decide their best course of action. These are a switch plan calculator, which determines if moving to a new plan is financially beneficial, a voluntary repayment calculator, to help the user understand the benefit of making overpayments and an equity remaining calculator, to help customers understand the estate they will leave when their plan in repaid.

Mark Gregory, CEO of ERS, said: “The past couple of months have brought about significant changes to how we live and work, in particular encouraging people to embrace online activity and interact digitally.

“We have long been pioneers of technology within the industry, so are already geared up to bring our customers greater choice and flexibility online. We’ve just launched our new video chat solution, providing customers with that highly sought-after face-to-face interaction, and now our expanded range of online calculators add to our suite of digital tools.

“We now offer a calculator for each type of lifetime mortgage as well as for home reversion plans and for RIO mortgages. Having a calculator that is specific to each option is vital as each equity release plan or mortgage has unique features that impact the final calculations of a customer’s loan.”