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Housing Finance (LICHFL) hopes the Centre would resolve some pending issues to enable it to launch long-awaited reverse mortgage scheme for senior citizens.

“The new government will bring in a lot of reforms across sectors. We expect the National Housing Bank will tie up with insurance companies to continue the reverse mortgage scheme beyond 20 years,” LICHFL director and chief executive

R R Nair said.

Reverse mortgage is a financial product that enables senior citizens, who own a house, to mortgage their property with a lender and convert a part of the home equity into tax-free income without having to sell the house.

The taxation issue has already been resolved with the then finance minister P Chidambaram declaring that the reverse mortgage would not amount to transfer and stream of revenue received by senior citizens would not be treated as income, he said.

But the pending issue is that the scheme has to be made life-long and not just for 20 years as is the case at present, Nair said.

“If it has to be life-long, there has to be some kindof insurance. NHB is presently working on it,” Nair said, adding the proposal is that the insurer takes care of the monthly payment either from the inception of the scheme or beyond 20 years for a consideration.

Though a couple of financial institutions have already launched the reverse mortgage product, the scheme did not find many takers.

The product, however, could prove beneficial to those senior citizens who are residing in the country while their next-of-kin are settled abroad.

LICHFL, a leading player in the Indian housing finance sector, had rolled out reverse mortgage loans for senior citizens in February 2008.