Visit our dedicated Shared Appreciated Mortgage page

If you have any questions about Shared Appreciated Mortgages (SAMs), you may find the answer on this page.

Once billed by the Banks as one of the best and most generous retirement mortgages on the market, SAMs offered customers the opportunity to release up to 25% of the value of their property.

The mortgages, however, had the effect of trapping clients in their own homes. In addition to the adverse practical impact of the SAM, the financial consequences have meant that clients who released, for example, £40,000 from their home are facing paying back £400,000 to the Bank. The rate of interest payable on a SAM is invariably exorbitant.

In 2016 evidence emerged the banks hurried customers approaching retirement into signing up to shared appreciation mortgages without financial advice.

At Teacher Stern, we have campaigned publicly for the Banks to change and in 2017 we wrote to hundreds of borrowers outlining plans to force the banks to rip up original contracts and charge a ‘fair and reasonable’ rate of interest on the loans, with the aim of taking the banks to task over these unfair shared appreciation mortgages.

We have 179 active claimants, with the majority against Bank of Scotland, and are making preparations for the claim.