Inform 21st January 2022

Voting for the 2022 Mortgage Strategy Awards is now open, and we’re delighted to have been nominated in the ‘Best Mortgage Club‘ category.

We would be hugely grateful for your vote if you feel we have gone above and beyond for you and your firm in the last 12 months.

Here’s a reminder of how we supported you in 2021:

• In 2021 we hosted in excess of 50 virtual events, and provided brokers with the opportunity to obtain more than 140 hours of CPD
• We welcomed an additional 8 lenders to our panel
• We hosted our Virtual Elevate Conference live from our studio
• We launched new partnerships with recruitment specialists, and PII provider, as well as a training programme and discounted rate for the new ‘Certificate in Protection’
• We held 6 Mastermind Alliance Sessions
• We held 2 successful New Build Forums which were supported by key personnel from across the New Build Industry, including Developers, Lenders, Homes England, HBF, Estate Agents and Surveyors
• We presented 30 members & partners with awards at our annual TMA Awards event in November – it was great to see so many of you face to face again!

VOTE FOR TMA

TBMC provides you with all the specialist expertise and support you need to successfully place any buy to let case, even in the trickiest circumstances.

They have an extensive lender panel to make sure you have access to the widest possible choice for your clients and have a free online sourcing system designed specifically for buy to let mortgages.

On top of all of this, they have also reduced their application fee to £199 exclusively for TMA advisers (normally £299) both for packaging and their referral service.

To ensure you benefit from this reduced fee, make sure you mention TMA when using TBMC’s packaging or referral service.

Call them now on 02920 695 400.

At British Friendly we offer more than just income replacement. Our discretionary BF Care package provides financial support for your clients and their families when they need it most and is included in their policy at no additional cost.

What’s included?

• Death Benefit
• Bereavement Benefit
• Terminal Illness Benefit
• Care Assistance Benefit
• Recovery Support Benefit

Learn more here.

Click here for full details and individual benefit FAQs.

For any questions or further information, please contact our Sales Team at sales@britishfriendly.com or calling 01234 358344

What Foundation is good at:

• Residential mortgages for borrowers with complex income, employment or credit history
• Buy-to-let mortgages for landlords, portfolios and limited companies
• Specialist property types including HMOs and multi-unit blocks

Visit the Foundation website

Working with Watts Commercial Finance could open up a whole new income stream for you via Commercial Finance and give you a “Plan B” when your lenders say no! Combine outstanding levels of commission with Watts doing all the work and this is the easy answer for the year ahead!

So if you have been thinking that commercial could be a route for you in 2022, think no further than Watts Commercial Finance as your chosen partner. Commercial can be daunting if you don’t work with the right firm and I am sure some of you will have walked away from commercial finance leads in the past for fear of disappointing the client, well that doesn’t need to be the case!

So how do you go about generating commercial finance leads?

The first step is to think about which clients you have who are self-employed? Now this can be anything from a director of a limited company, a small sole trader, a partnership etc.

Then you need to alter your fact find to include such questions as –

1. Where you aware we can help with your business funding needs?
2. What are your plans for your business for the year ahead? Will you need to raise finance to make the plans happen?
3. Do you rent or own your commercial premises?
4. Do you need to purchase any new vehicles or machinery this year?
5. How’s your cash flow? Do you find your clients pay their invoices slowly?
6. If we could secure competitively priced funding for you, how would that help your business?

These are just a few questions you can ask and the team at Watts are happy to walk you through these questions and coach you on how to handle the client’s responses. Once you have generated an enquiry then the easy part happens. Pass it to Watts Commercial and then we will work with you and the client to secure the very best funding that meets your client’s needs.

So if you would like to add commercial finance to your offering we would be delighted to arrange a meeting, coaching and ongoing support so that together we can offer your client an outstanding commercial solution. #wattstheanswer

Call us today on 03303 110777 or email advice@watts-commercial.co.uk to see how we can help you with your ‘Plan B’.

For many mortgage brokers, interest only mortgages for the over 50s is still an unfamiliar product.  In this article, our Sales Managing Director, Alison Pallett tries to change the misconceptions surrounding RIO mortgages and give some helpful advice.

RIO – how exactly does it help?

Well to start with you don’t need to be retired to qualify for a Retirement Interest Only Mortgage, just 55 years of age or above – there is no maximum age limit either.

Nor do you need to hold an Equity Release qualification to work with clients in this section of the market.

If I think about the customers, we have been able to help, I’d say focus about four key areas to look for these customers

1. Interest Only Term end
2. Customers who don’t want or don’t qualify for Equity Release
3. Mortgage Prisoners – stuck on SVR in mainstream lenders back books
4. People looking to help family members to get onto the housing latter or people looking to help themselves if they have a potential inheritance tax liability.

Without going into too much detail, RIO can unlock a lot of customer opportunity for the savvy broker who is working their client bank.

LiveMore, because we’re always trying to find a way to say yes

Unlike more traditional lenders we really understand later life lending.

For instance, we understand that many people continue to receive income, often from several sources, after the normal retirement age – it may even be through a part time job, or consultancy nature.  It may be combined with state or personal pensions.

We will consider all plausible income streams and for joint applications we may accept life cover to bridge any affordability gap upon the death of one borrower.

We have no maximum age, a range of products from 5 years to lifetime fixed and our revolutionary Ongoing Care Fee programme.  This means we will pay 0.55% gross paid after completion, plus an additional 0.13% gross per year for up to 15 years. There really are a huge number of reasons to choose LiveMore!

And finally,

I know that many brokers want to get into this part of the market and rightly so, we are an aging population after all, so what’s my message?

1. Visit our website www.livemorecapital.com – there is loads of information to help you get started and you can also view some of the recent real life cases we’ve been able to help in our case studies section.
2. Register on our Broker Portal and then you can run Maximum Borrowing Calculations and see just how easy this first stage can be.
3. Call us on 0203 0114 991 or email us at sales@livemorecapital.com – we really are here to help.
4. Follow us on LinkedIn @LiveMore Capital – we are always posting interesting articles there.

We believe that interest only mortgages for the over 50s will become increasingly important, so whilst we can’t promise we’ll be able to accept every case you have, you can be sure that we’ll give it our best shot – try us out and see how we can help you provide the best possible outcomes for borrowers.

The self-employed were possibly the most hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many now find themselves in a situation where the latest SA302 will reflect their struggle, despite the business having returned to pre Covid earning levels.

These borrowers are victims of circumstance. As a lender that listens and assesses each application on its individual merit, we are happy to take a common sense approach to those affected by the pandemic. Especially where it is evident that prior to the pandemic, there were no financial struggles and whilst the pandemic has not yet stabilized its evident that the business has, we can take a view.

If you have a customer where the income has returned to previous levels, evident via 3 most recent bank statements, a projection from the accountant we can look to use the 2019/2020 SA302.

If you have any enquiries where you think we might be able to help please don’t hesitate to give us a call or email any referrals across to mortgagedesk@centraltrust.co.uk.

Let us know about any changes straightaway. You can send us a message via case tracking (MATS) in Introducer Internet for the following.

Use our substitute property form for change of residential property where the application has been agreed by underwriting. All material changes must meet our lending criteria.

Live Chat is live

Great news, you can now use SFI Live Chat to talk to us about existing mortgage applications

We’re pleased to announce that you and your administrators can now also use SFI Live Chat to talk to us about your existing mortgage applications, in addition to your dedicated contact.

For existing application queries only, you and your administrators will need to complete identity and verification (ID&V) and provide the case reference number in the chat window.

 Use SFI Live Chat to talk to us about

SFI Live Chat is available during the following times

Accord will consider lending up to 85% LTV for those of your clients looking for debt consolidation.

What’s changing?

Accord are increasing the maximum LTV for debt consolidation to 85% LTV for your clients who are able to meet our higher credit score requirements.

When you submit a DIP, the decision returned will automatically confirm if your client is eligible for 85% LTV for debt consolidation. Where your client is not eligible, but does meet our standard credit score, they will automatically be offered 80% LTV.

What’s staying the same?

There’s no change to the maximum number of debts being consolidated (10) for both secured and unsecured debts and there is still a £50,000 debt consolidation limit for unsecured debt.

Please note

• DIP remains as a soft footprint only
• All other lending policy must still be met

When is this changing?

Our new criteria will be live from today.

We are delighted to announce that today we are making a number of changes to the amount we will finance against Finance to Value (FTV) levels across all Buy-to-Let (BTL) and Home Purchase Plan (HPP) products.

Key highlights include:

• All finance amounts on the current 80% FTV tiers have increased from £1m to £2m
• BTL now has an additional 75% FTV tier added, with the maximum finance set at £3m
• All finance above £3m is now 70% FTV for both BTL & HPP
• HPP maximum finance has increased from £2.5m to £5m
• Maximum finance on the 75% FTV HPP tier has increased from £2.5m to £3m
• HMO and MUFB maximum FTVs will remain at 75% (separately or in a portfolio) but the maximum finance will increase to 75% up to £3m and remain at 70% for finance from £3m to £5m

The changes are intended to align all our products and further improve the offering we provide to our broker partners and customers. The tables below clarify the changes to maximum finance and FTV levels:

BTL Product changes: