Senior Australians Equity Release Association of Lenders (SEQUAL) expects to see about 1400 financial planners qualify as reverse mortgage specialists under the FPA training program by mid 2010.

SEQUAL currently has about 1400 reverse mortgage certified specialists, consisting mainly of brokers.

"I hope to see that number to double in size next year, and for it to better represent planners as originators and settlers of these deals," SEQUAL chief executive Kevin Conlon said.

"We only launched our planner training program in August last year and the Financial Planning Association is committed to rolling that program out," Conlon said.

"We are almost at the start with planners, and if you consider that the FPA has some 14,000 members, some 10 per cent of that might be interested in extending their knowledge to include these sorts of strategies for retirement planning."

Last Friday, SEQUAL published a survey conducted by Deloitte Actuaries and Consultants on the growth of the reverse mortgage market in Australia.

Outstanding loans have grown from $2.02 billion at the end of 2007 to $2.48 billion at the end of 2008, an increase of 23 per cent.

But the settlements of new loans continued to slow, decreasing 28 per cent from $195 million at the end of 2007 to $141 million at the end of 2008.

This trend was already noticeable in the first half of 2008, when settlements declined 34 per cent from $271 million at the end of 2007 to $180 million at the end of June 2008.

Conlon said this reflected the shift in client attitudes from "desire-based" to "needs-based" borrowing.