Is Your Mortgage Running Into Retirement?

For a lot of people, it is. In mid-2024, just over two in five new mortgages had terms running past state pension age, according to Bank of England data obtained by LCP. The pressure point usually isn’t the last payment. It’s renewing a deal in your late sixties or seventies, when a lender may look at your income after you stop work.

A mortgage isn’t one exam.

It’s a resit every few years.

Each time a fixed deal ends, you’re back in the hall. New deal. New terms. Sometimes a lender checking your answers all over again.

Take a 35-year term at 40, and some of those resits land in your late sixties and seventies.

Different paper by then.

And if anyone marks it, they’ll mark it against your pension, not your payslip.

How many mortgages now run past state pension age?

I was reading a Freedom of Information request the other day.

(As you do.)

Somebody had asked the FCA:

Please provide me with the total number of mortgages with a term of 35 years or more that have taken out each calendar year for the past five years.

Please break this information down into location, age and gender.

It reads like something I’d type into an LLM. Occupational hazard, I guess..

(I’m not the only one who uses please and thank you when typing in the chat box?)

The FCA answered two out of three; it doesn’t collect gender for mortgage borrowers.

But it got me thinking.

My theory? The share of mortgages running past state pension age is still going up.

I can’t prove it, but the data leans that way.

At the end of 2021, barely three in ten new mortgages had terms running past state pension age. By the middle of 2024, it was just over two in five.

(Or 30% and 40%, if you’re a percentages person)

That’s the most recent figure that measures it directly. It comes from Bank of England data obtained by LCP, and it stops in mid-2024.

The FCA’s figures go further – among borrowers aged 36 to 40, mortgages with terms of 35 years or more went from 12,955 in 2022 to 31,235 in 2025.

Every one of those borrowers will be at least 71 when the term ends. That’s past any state pension age currently scheduled.

So why can’t I prove it?

Those FCA figures are counts, not shares. They include product transfers, second charge mortgages and lifetime mortgages, not just new buyers. And nothing newer than mid-2024 measures the share directly.

A hunch with some evidence behind it, then. Not a forecast.

Why take a longer mortgage term?

A longer term does two things.

Your monthly payments go down. The interest you pay overall goes up.

That’s the trade. No free lunch, eh..

And you don’t have to keep the full term. You can remortgage onto a shorter one later, if you can afford the higher payments.

Why does it matter when the deal ends, not when the mortgage does?

Because the term is one promise. The deal is one you keep renegotiating.

And every renegotiation is a resit.

Lenders set their own age limits, but most won’t approve a mortgage if you’d be over 70 or 80 when it ends.

At 40, that can trim how long your term is.

At 66, it can be the whole conversation.

Switch to a new lender, or borrow more, and you may face another affordability assessment.

Do nothing when a deal ends, and you’ll probably move onto your lender’s standard variable rate.

That will usually be higher than other rates you might be able to get.

None of this means a long term was the wrong call.

It means the term is the easy bit. The renewals are where it’s decided.

What can you do if your mortgage runs into retirement?

Broadly, the options people look at fall into a few groups.

Which one fits, if any, is a conversation. Not a blog post.

• Overpaying while you’re earning. Many lenders let you overpay a set amount each year without an early repayment charge. Check your own deal first.
• Shortening the term when you remortgage, if you can afford the higher payments.
• Moving to a new deal with your current lender when your existing one ends (a product transfer).
• A retirement interest-only mortgage, later on. You pay only the interest each month, and the loan is usually repaid when the home is sold. Lenders set their own age requirements, and you’ll still need to show you can afford the interest.

You can’t skip the resits.

You can see the paper early.

Want to see what the term does to the numbers?

Try the repayment calculator → here

Mortgage running past the age you plan to stop work? A 15-minute call is a good place to start.

🚫 Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

Sources: Financial Conduct Authority, “Information on mortgages of 35+ year terms” (FOI2026/01380, released 29 June 2026). This is Product Sales Data covering all regulated mortgage sales with terms of 35 years or more, 2021–2025. It includes internal product transfers (from Q2 2021), second charge mortgages and lifetime mortgages. Age is the age of the main borrower. Comparisons start at 2022 because product transfers entered the dataset part-way through 2021. LCP (Sir Steve Webb): Bank of England data obtained under Freedom of Information, as reported by Financial Reporter (2 December 2024; share of new mortgages in Q2 2024 with terms past state pension age, and “barely 3 in 10” at end-2021) and Express & Star / PA (13 May 2024; 31% in Q4 2021). Royal London, “State Pension age increase: what you need to know” (5 April 2026). MoneyHelper (Money and Pensions Service), “Should you get a 30-year or longer mortgage?” (updated 24 June 2026), “Retirement interest-only (RIO) mortgage” and “Remortgaging to get the best deal” (both accessed October 2026).

Related reading: Should you save or overpay your mortgage? A United Mortgages® guide