As announced by Rishi Sunak in the #Budge2021 announcement, the new £500,000 nil rate band for #StampDuity will now end on 30th June.
Then, to smooth the transition back to normal, the nil rate band will be £250,000, double its standard level until the end of September.
Lloyds Banking Group Stamp Duty changes
Following the announcement by The Chancellor on the 3rd March regarding the Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) Temporary Holiday in England and Northern Island being extended until the 30th June 2021, it is only necessary to contact them if the value of the cash incentive declared increases from the amount already notified to them, as detailed within the mortgage offer.
For example – Where the incentive reduces, is removed or the structure of the incentive changes there is no need to notify them, providing it does not exceed the amount already advised to them.
Information for conveyancers can be found in Section 6.4.4 of the UK Finance Handbook which identifies in which scenarios a conveyancer needs or does not need to report changes to the bank, and this does not alter that advice.
LendInvest Case study: 75% LTV Limited Company Buy-to-Let purchases
Supporting Limited Company Buy-to-Let clients is one of our specialties, with criteria tailored to support professional and portfolio landlords to get the most out of our product range. Take a closer look at how we support these deals with these case studies.
Another way of approaching the “added value” conversation
When positioning “added value services” with your clients how often do you highlight the monetary value of the benefits on offer?
Find out how much your clients could save by using their full allocation of HealthWise benefits each year. You could be pleasantly surprised.
LV= Tools designed with you and your clients in mind
At LV= we want to make it easy for you to do business with us. Our range of tools and calculators have been specially developed with you in mind. Set up and build business with our online tools, and create illustrations for your clients in just a few clicks.
Our pre-underwriting tool gives you an instant indicative decision, helping you understand the likely outcome of disclosures, allowing you to manage your client’s expectations.
No nasty surprises
The tool mirrors the questions and outcomes from the full application. It helps manage your client’s expectations, and avoids wasted applications.
Used by experts
Our underwriters use the tool during manual underwriting so you can be confident that you’ll get the same advice and results as we do.
Log into Fastway to access our pre-underwriting tool, and get an instant decision or find out more about our pre-underwriting tool here.
Risk Reality Calculator
Our online calculator helps your clients see the true value of financial protection-in no time at all. Simply input four details to instantly get a personalised result.
24/7 online access- Submit business online whenever it suits you.
Find access our tools and calculators available to you here
Place, Source, Track.
Impact Portal is the only resource you’ll need for placing, sourcing and tracking your cases. This user-friendly CRM systems provides you with control of your clients’ applications. Our system has a host of features to help save you time and assist in managing your cases throughout the application process.
Our award-winning technology allows your to track all your cases from simple enquiries all the way through to completed applications.
Could you help save time with portfolio applications?
Did you know that we’ve updated and improved our portfolio application process to make it as straightforward as possible?
This ensures we do all the heavy lifting, leaving you to focus on supporting your customers.
Use our simple form, the landlord’s forms, or even another lender’s forms to provide details of the existing property portfolio.
Download our simple forms
Simplified underwriting process – less paperwork to help with turnaround times.
We now only need to see 1 month’s bank statements, previously 3 months, reducing paperwork even further (some restrictions apply).
Online calculator providing an indicative assessment.
Our portfolio team will input the existing property details for you. Any missing information is followed up with a phone call.
Our portfolio assessment is valid for 12 months making future applications easier.
To find out more, speak with your Business Development Manager or call our dedicated support team on 0800 116 4385.
Skipton Talks goes live
Welcome to the launch of our brand-new channel – Skipton Talks. It’s hosted on our website and it’s the go-to place for webinars, blogs and insight for the intermediary community. It’s a great way to connect with other intermediaries and keep up to date with what’s trending in our industry.
Thursday 18 March 9.30am
Join Andrew Bottomley, Customer Director at Skipton Building Society who will be talking about changing customer expectations in financial services – what’s the data telling us about 2021?
Thursday 25 March 9.30am
Join our Key Relationship Manager Derek Adams and Business Development Manager Jon Rawley for a session on Skipton’s criteria and what brokers need to know.
Thursday 1 April 9.30am
Karen Appleton our Head of New Lending will be discussing how our approach to risk and common-sense lending are Making Things Easier for You.
Thursday 8 April 9.30am
Lauren Copping, Telephone Business Development Manager, will be asking if you and your clients are making the most of Product Transfers.
Thursday 15 April 9.30am
Zahoor Ahmad, Diversity & Inclusion Lead at Skipton Building Society will be concluding the series with a thought-provoking session on inclusivity in financial services and how to make your advice more accessible.
Take me there.
Headlining this spring
We’re kicking off the launch with a series of webinars that will be running throughout spring, featuring a variety of guest speakers and subjects inspired by you.
Register for a webinar.
Join the conversation
We’re adding new content all the time, so keep checking in to see what’s new. We can’t wait to see you there.
Be a part of it.
P is for Portfolio Landlords
At Zephyr we’re dedicated to meeting the needs of Portfolio Landlords – here’s some criteria highlights that could be of benefit to your clients…
- Unlimited background portfolio with surplus portfolio rental income considered to support an application in certain cases
- Background stress test; rental income simply needs to cover 100% of the Zephyr mortgage(s)
- We partner with eTech’s BTL Hub to allow you to send through additional background information in a quick and simple way.
Q is for Quick answers
Our BDM team are experts in BTL and are on hand to answer any of your questions. Just get in touch for any help and support you need, whether it’s a quick query on a case submission or a more complex question – they’re always happy to help.
Find your local BDM
B is for Broker insights
In these changing times, it’s important to find the most up-to-date information available. We regularly share the thoughts and views of our experts, plus we have direct access to the latest findings from our sister company The Deposit Protection Service (The DPS), meaning you can be sure get information hot off the press to bring useful insights to help your clients.
In case you missed some of our recent articles and webcasts, all are available on our website at zephyrhomeloans.co.uk/news.
Get in touch today
Call 0370 707 1894 Mon to Fri 9am to 5pm
Go to zephyrhomeloans.co.uk
Change to MUTAL opening times
From the 8th March we are changing our MUTAL opening times to 10am-5pm Monday to Friday. The first hour of the day will be dedicate to our email traffic.
This change aims to improve our service response times by ensuring more staff are on the phone during the times you need us.
What can MUTAL help with:
- Pre-sales underwriting enquiries
- Providing indication of terms on pre-submission applications
If you are waiting for an email reply from MUTAL, please check your Be Secure Inbox
Want help for Post Sale or System support?
If you need help with system support or post sale enquires you may find these links useful
- Check the progress of a case on OLPC
- Our 8-way guide could help with system support
- Our virtual assistant found in OLPC can answer your questions
Reserve your place for Events
Throughout March, Pure Retirement are bringing you a range of free events, allowing you to hear from a host of industry experts and enhance your equity release knowledge to set yourself apart in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
The month begins with their regular webinar, The Unplaceables, on 10th March where you can get support with difficult cases, followed by a Pure Update from the Pure Retirement team and Jaqueline Berry from My Care Consultant on 17th March.
You can then fine-tune your marketing skills on 24th March, where you’ll hear from a host of marketing specialists on creating video content, making your website accessible plus the newest additions to Pure’s marketing toolkit.
Finally, Pure Retirement will be inviting Eddie Lamb from Hiscox Insurance to present a cyber-crime webinar, designed to help keep you and your clients safe from potential harm online.
Reserve your place in Pure Retirement’s upcoming events here
How your feedback has impacted us
One of the core parts of our lending proposition, given that we only offer our mortgages via advisers, is responding to feedback and seeking to find solutions to the issues raised.
Just recently we were listed in the Smart Money Mortgage Lender Benchmark survey for H2 last year and ranked against our peers for net promoter score, ease of determining maximum loan amount, ease of determining product eligibility, relationship managers and communication.
While it was clearly positive to be ranked third in our listing of specialist lenders, there were issues to address, most notably – ‘Speed to process apps through to offer’.
A chance to evolve
Admittedly, given everything that lenders have been working through in terms of staff working from home and the resource it took to deal with customer requests for mortgage payment deferrals, it’s clear this wasn’t an issue that was unique to Foundation. As the Benchmark itself pointed out, speed to offer scores across all lenders dropped by 4.9%, the biggest drop the survey had seen since it was first introduced.
However, what would be unique to us, was the way we responded to this, in order to improve the experience for advisers and their clients.
Enhancements across departments
The process began for us back in the Autumn last year. We streamlined the documents we request and made changes to the stage at which underwriters get involved.
We opened up a ‘Project Last Task’ because many cases were just waiting for one ‘Last Task’ to be completed before we could move them on to offer.
That resulted in Foundation being able to double our daily offer rate throughout October and November, to give those clients a much better chance of completing before the stamp duty deadline.
New recruits
This overall focus has also meant a significant increase in staff, in order to move cases through our process, but also in anticipation of the heightened requirements to complete cases in March and what we have in our pipeline for the future.
So we’ve added seven new experienced underwriters in January, and over the past few months, a number of new underwriting assistants, processing team members and completions staff have joined. Since September the new business team has grown by 45%.
Plus, we’ve now added five new sales staff, internal BDMs and some of our existing internal BDMs have moved on to become Regional Account Managers. Again, it’s about understanding the needs of the advisers who use us and maintaining the strongest standards.
There is no doubt that the last six months in particular have been challenging, but they’ve also been rewarding. The measures we’ve been able to put in place will last beyond this period and will be improved, continuously. This is a conversation which does not stop and it’s vital we never stop reacting to the feedback we get. So thank you.
Click here to register with Foundation to receive more updates like this.
