Inform 14th June 2024

Pepper Money

Embracing and embedding diversity, equity and inclusion in the mortgage industry.

We are pleased to share our fifth episode of The Specialist podcast. The episode covers Embracing and embedding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the mortgage industry.

Rob Barnard is joined by Bharat Sagar, Ambassador @ Large at AE3 Media.

Tune in to hear them discuss the progression of DE&I in the mortgage industry, the opportunities for companies to embrace DE&I, and how lenders and brokers can support vulnerable customers.

Understanding and embracing diversity is both ethically and commercially beneficial. According to a series of reports by business consultancy McKinsey, diverse companies are more likely than ever to financially outperform their less diverse peers.

Stream or download now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts to discover more.

British Friendly

British Friendly launch Children’s Critical Illness Cover, their new, optional benefit.

British Friendly are pleased to launch Children’s Critical Illness Cover, their brand-new optional benefit that’s now available to add to new Protect and Breathing Space policies at an additional cost.

Designed to help provide your clients with more than just Income Protection should the worst happen, this benefit offers up to £25,000 of financial relief to help cover additional costs associated from caring for a child with a serious illness.

What are the key features?

• Your client can choose between £1,000 and £25,000 of cover, to suit their needs.
• Pays a lump sum if your client’s child is diagnosed with one of 78 critical illnesses. This includes 58 full payment conditions, including congenital and 8 child-specific conditions, and 20 additional payment conditions.
• Covers children from birth up to age 18, or 23 if in full time education.
• There’s no survival period requirement after a critical illness diagnosis.
• There’s no limit to the number of children covered.
• It can be added at application, during pregnancy, or within 6 months of 4 additional family life changes.

Download your helpful guides today.

British Friendly have created two handy sales tools to help you talk about Children’s Critical Illness Cover with your clients. You can take a look and download these below.

View their client facing guide

View their adviser facing guide

Get a quote

Already registered with British Friendly? Start your quote today.

Click here

For more information on British Friendly’s product offering, please click here. Or, to speak to the team, or register an agency, please call 01234 348 007 or email sales@britishfriendly.com.

LendInvest

How can brokers help overcome affordability challenges for homeowner customers?

The affordability challenge for your homeowner customers is an increasing feature of the residential mortgage market. LendInvest Mortgages’ new guide on the affordability challenge helps address these questions for you to ultimately help your customers.

This piece covers:

– A market overview blog, with key statistics

– A Q&A with our underwriters

– A guide for mortgage brokers, what do you need to know about affordability?

Download document here.

Pure Retirement

Explore the current challenges facing the later life lending sector with Pure Retirement

Pure Retirement’s Head of Distribution, Scott Burman, shares his thoughts on the current challenges of the later life finance market in a new article featured in the Financial Reporter.

In this interview, Scott Burman, sheds light on:

• Why product development is vital to industry growth
• Why later life lending is appealing to a broader audience
• Why this borrowing option is resonating with owners of higher value homes

Scott Burman explores if technology-led service or service in general offers a key differentiator in the market and discusses some of the latest statistical findings from Pure Retirement.

Stay informed with the latest developments in the later life lending sector and read the interview on the Financial Reporter’s website here.

The Mortgage Lender

Economic Update – June 2024

We’ve teamed up with 4most Economic Consultants to provide you with a monthly economic update. The update for June is now available to download.

The update covers:

• Inflation and interest rates
• Labour market
• Housing market
• Rental market
• Mortgage market activity
• Rate analysis

Read the update.  

Foundation Homeloans

Case Study: Complex Mixed-Use Property Refinance

Claudia, a property pro, had a mixed-use building with various leaseholds. We helped her simplify by merging them into one freehold title, allowing her to refinance the entire property. At Solutions by Foundation, our mixed-use products can handle complex situations.

Read the full case study here.

Aviva

Video Hub: Claims

Aviva 2024 Claims Live  – Beyond The Numbers

CPD 2 hours

Synopsis: Discover how we go beyond insurance for our customers. With a claim being more than just a payment, we aim to demonstrate the value of every protection conversation you have with your clients.

Understanding the claims report

CPD 30mins

Synopsis: Every wondered what the claims data is telling you?  We’ll walk through the Aviva 2022 claims brochure, understand what the data is telling us and how best to use this with your customer to demonstrate the need for protection.

Saffron for Intermediaries

Driving toward a greener future for housing in the UK

By Phil Lawford, National Account Manager at Saffron for Intermediaries

Over the past few years, we have seen a growing trend of consumers and businesses becoming more sustainably minded. As people start carrying this mindset into all aspects of their lives, it makes sense that they are considering sustainability when purchasing a home. But how can brokers help customers improve the energy efficiency of their homes and subsequently raise the standard of the nation’s housing stock?

Working With What You Already Have

A growing number of lenders are rewarding borrowers with lower interest rates for moving into new-build properties that have a good EPC rating. However, more than a fifth (21%) of carbon emissions come from the UK’s existing housing stock. To truly tackle the root of the issue, we should encourage owners with older homes to improve the energy efficiency of their properties.

To this end, Saffron introduced a Retro Fit mortgage in May 2020 for those with properties at the lower end of the EPC scale. The product offers borrowers lower rates for bringing their EPC rating up to an E standard within six months. It can be an attractive option for customers looking to make their property more green and energy efficient while reducing their energy bills. Brokers with customers who are sustainably minded should be aware of options like this and discuss them with their clients to help them find a solution that best suits their ethical and homebuying needs.

Starting Afresh: Self Build and Custom Build

An alternative to buying an older property and improving its energy efficiency is to build your own home with sustainability in mind from the outset. According to the NSBRC, more than 13,000 people did this in 2022 – 1,000 more than six years earlier in 2016.

TV shows like the Channel 4’s Grand Designs have raised the profile of self-build as a way to design and build a property. However, while the show has raised awareness about this approach, it has also created an image of these projects being complex and out of reach for the average buyer. In reality, self-build is an option for people on all types of budgets.

Those who proceed with a self- or custom-build project are likely to stay in their property for longer because they are bespoke to their needs, but they often design their homes with the latest energy efficiency measures in mind too. A recent report from NaCSBA (The National Custom & Self Build Association) revealed just how green self-builds can be. EPC data highlighted that the energy consumption for self- and custom-build properties could be up to 42% lower than a typical new build property, while producing up to 43% fewer CO2 emissions (1).

As self- and custom-build projects become a viable avenue for sustainable homeownership, lenders and brokers need to understand how they can cater to this growing market. At Saffron, we believe there is a real opportunity here for brokers and lenders alike. By providing the capital borrowers need, we can help them install energy efficient measures and use environmentally friendly building materials from the outset.

Greener Together

As people’s tastes and priorities shift and sustainability becomes more and more important, the mortgage industry needs to adapt. At Saffron, we’re constantly reviewing how we can best support brokers and have provided a number of resources including guides, webinars, and thought leadership pieces, which can be found on our website. Lenders and brokers can come together to support individuals in driving a more sustainable future – whether that be through improving their existing homes or building tailored energy efficient properties.

(1) Source: NaCSBA (National Custom & Self Build Association) Custom and Self build market report 2023-24

Paragon

Important changes for you to be aware of

This year we’ve been busy making some changes to our products and services, after having listened to our intermediaries.

As a result we recently launched our new untangled campaign – you may have seen it?

The campaign promotes some of the changes we’ve made to streamline our products, stripping things back and removing our labels, making it even easier to do business with us.

This means we’ve also had to make some changes to our website and some of the URLs you use have changed.

What’s changed?

Short-term finance is out and refurb-to-let is in
We’ve rebadged our short-term finance offering to refurb-to-let so it’s easier to understand and to know who it’s for. You can find all the details here.

New product = new documents & URLS
A change to our product offering means we have new documents and URLS for you to share. Please make sure wherever you have our current product details you update them with the following:

• Product guide
• Lending guidelines
• Affordability calculators

Same great products, made simple

We guarantee it’s the same great products, but we’ve made it simple for you to find what you’re looking for. Don’t just take our word it…

Take a look!

Coventry for Intermediaries

How to prevent mortgage fraud: A broker’s guide

In the UK property sector, a staggering 1.1 million cases of property fraud were reported between April 2022 and March 2023, a 15.3% rise compared to the same period the year previously¹.

There’s also a disturbing rise in the number of borrowers becoming vulnerable to mortgage fraud, up by around a third², and even straying into it themselves by overstating their incomes.

The consequences for those caught in the act could be severe and could lead to prosecution and risk of defaulting on loans they cannot afford, making it more difficult to borrow again in the future.

This blog should serve as a practical guide to help brokers protect their clients.

Know your client

A broker’s initial meeting with a client represents the best opportunity to risk assess and potentially shut down fraud before it escalates. Where possible, brokers should organise at least one in-person meeting to establish the legitimacy of the client in front of them and what to expect when they come to submit their papers. This also extends to third party introducers and gauging their credibility.

Assessing documentation

When reviewing documentation that supports a mortgage application, be on the lookout for tell-tale signs of forgery, such as oversimplified payslips, rounded figures or inconsistent formatting compared to what is typical of genuine documents.

It’s important to identify any inconsistencies in a client’s story, so compare their reported job and what they claim to earn with why they want to buy a property. From time to time, a broker will need to make a plausibility judgement. If the falsification of documents is difficult to detect, don’t hesitate to ask the client for more information, and keep a good record of communication.

Stay a step ahead

Brokers must not only be aware of the various types of property fraud but also have some street smarts as to the tactics and trends popular among organised criminals to try and deceive lenders.

Using digital tools to alter documents is very common to try and achieve a more competitive mortgage product.

Deposit redirection fraud

But it’s not just lenders that are being targeted. Deposit redirection fraud has many innocent homebuyers on edge. In these schemes, criminals pose as solicitors and con homebuyers into transferring deposits into their bank accounts. Solicitors rarely change their bank account details and will tell clients in advance when they need to transfer their deposit monies.

Know your response and how to notify lenders

If in doubt, call a halt to the mortgage application process immediately and reach out to the lender to flag your concerns. This will allow the lender to conduct an independent review.

As the first line of defence against mortgage fraud, brokers must continue to maintain their high standards of due diligence. Coventry for intermediaries has previously hosted webinars on identifying false documentation and has recently released a free guide to help brokers prevent this potentially devastating type of fraud.

Gatehouse Bank

Introducing Buy-to-Let Top slicing/Income top-up with streamlined FSCR bandings

We are delighted to announce that we have  made some positive changes to our Buy-to-Let (BTL) product range outlined below:

BTL Top slicing/Income top-up
Available to all UK residents purchasing a BTL property (excluding HMOs/MUFBs) where at least one applicant has a minimum income of £32,000 p.a. subject to underwriting and criteria.

New BTL Top Slicing/Income top-up Calculator
We have Introduced a Buy-to-Let Affordability Calculator which supports rental/top-up calculations which can be found here.

BTL FSCR affordability
The Finance Service Coverage Ratio (FSCR) has been simplified:
• For basic rate taxpayers or a Limited Company purchasing a standard residential property, the rate is 125% for purchasing individual BTLs or as part of a portfolio
• For higher and additional rate taxpayers purchasing a BTL property individually or as part of a portfolio, the rate is 145%
• Where Top-slicing is required, a minimum FSCR of 110% for Limited Companies and 115% for individuals will be required
• Please refer to our criteria guides for further information here

Our product range is available to UK residents, UK Expats, International residents and UK registered corporate entities looking to purchase property in England and Wales. Our full range of products can be found here.

To review our current service levels, click here.

If you have any queries or require further information our team remains available via phone and email, details of which can be found here.

Thank you for your continued support.

View all products

Mansfield Building Society

Applicants from day one with their current employer

When it comes to limited employment history, we can accept applicants from day one with their current employer on our Versatility range up to 85% LTV. We can also accept applicants with less than 12 months continuous employment too.

Our employment criteria is available alongside our accommodating criteria for those with historic credit blips. Find out more in our criteria guide.

For more information about our products and services, including our affordability calculator and applying through our online portal, visit our website.

United Trust Bank

Find a wider choice of Mortgage criteria with UTB

The mortgage landscape has changed, making it more challenging for customers to reach their home aspirations. Don’t be deterred if a case won’t fit on the High Street, we may have just the solution for you.

We have revised our criteria to assist a wider range of residential customer that may have varied adverse credit. We will consider customers with:

✓ a missed mortgage payment within the last 12 months
✓ a recent CCJ or default
✓ current unsecured arrears
✓ arrears on short term credit
✓ a missed credit card payment or currently in arrears
✓ historical adverse credit (over two years, unlimited)
✓ Any adverse on mail order or communications contracts are ignored!

We can also help with:

Non-standard property
• Locations: e.g. next to shops or other commercial premises
• Construction: e.g. timber framed and Wimpey no-fines
• No LTV restrictions: i.e. on ex-local authority or any property type

Non-standard employment status
• Self-employed, one years accounts accepted
• Contractors – daily rate x 5 x 48 weeks
• Complex incomes accepted

Better terms and processes
• No application fee
• Most cases are on AVM
• No solicitor fees for remortgages

For more information please contact our friendly expert mortgage enquiries team:
Call 0207 031 1551 or email mortgage.enquiries@utbank.co.uk

Check our product and criteria guides on our website.

Register here.