Service Provider Review: Elderlife Financial Services
Description: Elderlife Financial Services is a short-term (up to 3 years) unsecured lender specializing in bridge funding for assisted living and long-term nursing care. They are lenders, and do charge interest (6-10% APR). Bridge funding is usually used for people who are applying for VA benefits such as Aid and Attendance, or who are working on a reverse mortgage or preparing to sell a house. Elderlife's funds can only be distributed to the assisted living facility or nursing home.
Application process: as with all financial services, the paperwork can be a bit cumbersome. They attempt to make the process as streamlined as possible. They do require access to a fax to return the paperwork (they don't accept email attachments nor uploads to services such as Dropbox or Google Drive.)
Customer service: Generally, all of my interactions have been polite, but they do have a policy of high touch customer service. They send many reminders, via email or phone, to return paperwork or around payment. I personally found this irritating, since I use standard bill pay services through my bank. However, they are dealing with a population that is under stress and likely to be overwhelmed, so for some, the reminders may be welcome.
Ease of use of website: the website allows the user to both make payments via ACH and to request distributions to the care facility (up to the credit limit). The payment and request sides are both robust and the design is visually clean (which is easier for people using assistive technology or with limited sight.) It uses relatively high quality security, equivalent to most banking and credit services.
We used this lender for about 6 months, while arranging for a sale of property. I have just paid off the entirety of the loan; I'll know by the end of the week how the closure of the credit account went. Would I use them again? Maybe. I hope I don't have to. They're an unsecured lender, with all of the financial credit hits that come with unsecured lending. My grandmother has always had no or poor credit (she was never good with money anyway and low income and primarily a cash user) which meant she needed a co-signer.
The good thing about their service, if one is applying for VA A&A (which results in a lump sum payment back to the application date) or otherwise has good expectations of a future lump sum is that the monthly payments are interest only. They are definitely bridge funding -- short-term, with an expected balloon payment. This is not a long-term solution for financing long-term care without a future source of income.
As with all financial services, I think the standard disclaimers must be considered: read everything, consider all options, be aware that all credit can be problematic.