Can insurers help solve the UK's social care crisis?

There has been much agonising over the UK's social care crisis, and especially the exceptionally high cost of residential care for those with chronic conditions like dementia. 

Patrick Jenkins, the FT's financial editor, thinks that current policy uncertainty offers a chance for the City to step into the breach. In particular, he believes that financiers could design "equity release" products that would enable Britons to tap into their enormous housing wealth to fund social care.

This may be easier said than done. Equity release products have in the past been supplied by insurers as a counter balance to their annuity books. But after the introduction of "pensions freedom", the sale of annuities has fallen. 

A two-pipe problem, as Sherlock Holmes would have said to Dr. Watson.