Inform 8th April 2022

Introducer Internet won’t be available from 9pm on Saturday 9 April until 6am on Monday 11 April.

You won’t be able to submit cases during this time. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Changes to our self-employed policy

On Monday 11 April we’re making the following changes that will affect self-employed residential applications.

Changes to how we calculate self-employed income
We’ll now be taking an average of the last two years’ income figures, or the latest year if this is lower. For existing Santander mortgage customers moving home, underwriters may be able to utilise a more individual assessment.

We’re still limiting applications where any applicant is self-employed to 75% LTV (excluding existing Santander mortgage customers moving home).

Our affordability calculator will be updated to reflect these changes, so please use this calculator on our website to make sure you get an accurate reflection of what we can lend your clients.

Introducer Internet changes

• We’re streamlining the Covid-19 business impacted definition and will now only capture details of any outstanding support loans.
• The Covid-19 question will be removed and replaced with a new question confirming any outstanding Bounce Back Loan (BBLs) or Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan (CBILs).

Any undisclosed BBL/CBIL liability will lead to a decline decision.

Simplifying the income evidence required

We’re simplifying the income evidence requirements, primarily through an updated accountant’s certificate, which went live on 30 March. Applicants providing the updated accountant’s certificate will no longer need to provide business bank statements.

Please note: updated MATS messages will be sent.

How we treat Covid-19 liabilities

Where there is an outstanding BBL/CBIL, underwriters will continue to factor the repayments into the affordability assessment. The additional information captured on the accountant’s certificate may support a more detailed individual assessment.

Pipeline rules

Our usual pipeline rules will apply. All full mortgage applications (FMAs) already submitted on Introducer Internet by close of business on Saturday 9 April won’t be affected by these changes. Any FMAs submitted from 6am on Monday 11 April, or where a material change is made to an FMA submitted before close of business on Saturday 9 April will be assessed using our updated lending policy.

How are we supporting the change?

These changes will be reflected in Introducer Internet, our affordability calculator and our evidence requirements guide.

From Wednesday 6 April we are making a change to the loan to income (LTI) caps applied as part of our affordability calculation.

For incomes >£75,000 where the loan to value (LTV) is 85-90% and the loan amount is <=£500,000 the LTI is being increased from 4.49x to 4.75x.

We use an affordability calculation to work out the maximum loan available to a customer, but LTI caps also apply. Please see the Affordability and Sustainability section within Incomes on our website Criteria page for details of all the LTIs which apply.

Our website Mortgage Affordability Calculator is available to give you an indication of the amount we are able to lend a customer.

The change applies to applications started from Wednesday 6 April. For example, a Decision in Principle (DIP) keyed on Wednesday 6 April will follow the new rules, but a DIP started before Wednesday 6 April will follow the previous rules.

As part of OSB Group, we’ve enhanced our bridging range in Precise Mortgages as well as re-introduced bridging finance into InterBay, to provide you and your clients with even more bridging solutions.

This is the first time we’ve leveraged our expertise across both brands, and our new two-tier refurbishment offering, in addition to our standard bridging range, gives you a real breadth of products and rates from 0.47% per month for regulated and non-regulated.

So, whether it’s speed for a regulated purchase you need through Precise Mortgages, or funding to complete a large refurbishment through InterBay, we’ve got all the bases covered.

Highlights including:

• Precise Mortgages
  Up to 75% LTV (including fees)
• Standard and Light Refurbishment (Tier 1)* for regulated and non-regulated
• Regulated Heavy Refurbishment (Tier 2)** available
• AVMs up to 60% LTV on Precise Mortgages products (No fee payable)
• Available for conversions of houses into HMOs up to 6 bedrooms.

InterBay

• Expanded solicitor panel for InterBay, including dual representation
• Brand new developer exit range up to 75% LTV
• Standard and Light Refurbishment (Tier 1)* for non-regulated
• Non-regulated Heavy Refurbishment (Tier 2)** available
• Available for conversions of houses and commercial units into flats
• Conversions of houses into HMOs up to 10 bedrooms

*Light Refurbishment (Tier 1) is suitable for refurbishments only requiring building regulations and works under Permitted Development Rights (PDR) that have no change to the property’s footprint.

**Heavy Refurbishment (Tier 2) is suitable where the property’s footprint is increasing either via planning permission or under Permitted Development Rights (PDR).

As always, we would really appreciate your support in promoting these products to your brokers and Lisa and Laurelle will be in touch shortly with the approved product guide and document links. However, if there is anything else that you need from a marketing perspective, please let us know and we’ll be happy to work with you on this.

In the meantime, should you have any questions regarding the above, please do not hesitate to contact either myself, your corporate account manager, or your Specialist Finance Account Manager that covers both Precise Mortgages and InterBay for bridging finance.

There are around 7.6 million people living with heart and circulatory diseases in the UK. This means almost twice as many people are living with heart and circulatory diseases in the UK than with cancer and Alzheimer’s disease combined.*

That’s why we’ve improved our Critical Illness Cover – we want to help more customers if they’re affected by heart disease.

Our nine heart-related full definitions already cover more severe cases, but we’ve now added two less severe heart-related definitions to our additional cover conditions:

• Less severe cardiomyopathy – a disease of the heart muscle that leads to the heart becoming enlarged and functioning poorly.
• Less severe heart failure – means the heart is unable to pump blood around the body in the way it should.

What do these improvements mean?

Our Critical Illness Cover now includes 73 definitions: 46 full definitions and 27 additional cover conditions. With 14 of these being for heart- related conditions and surgeries, we’re focusing on the conditions your clients are more likely to get and helping them to get the best outcomes in times of need.

Find out more about our recent Critical Illness Cover improvements.

*British Heart Foundation website (accessed 21st March 2022).

Find out more

Protection On Line Service

Apologies for any inconvenience caused however, critical maintenance to Royal London’s Protection On Line Service will be commencing from Saturday, 9th of April 06:00am till Sunday 10th of April 10:00pm.

During this time you will be unable to produce quotes etc.

There will be an outage notice on their Protection website making you aware of the maintenance that is being done.

Impact Packaging are one of the limited few distributors who are part of Spring Finance’s pilot scheme, which enables clients access to a brand new range of Bridging products.

First & Second Charge Heavy Renovation & Refurbishment

• Loan Sizes – First Charge: £100K – £750K, Second Charge: £100K – £500K
• Maximum 65% LTV + 100% of costs in arrears
• Term up to 12 months FCA regulated, up to 18 months unregulated
• All types of credit history considered
• No early redemption fee
• Works to the property: Extensions of up to 33% of the current square footage e.g. Single storey extensions and loft conversions

First Charge Residential Bridging

• Maximum 75% LTV for Purchase

   

• Loans between £50K – £1m
• All types of credit history considered
• Arrangement Fee is 2% of facility amount
• All exit routes considered
• Non-structural works permitted
• Interest – Rolled up or monthly pay subject to satisfactory affordability assessment

We’ve made big changes to our online journey, so with fewer clicks you can give your clients faster Income Protection cover.

Why try British Friendly?

• Our improved online medical and lifestyle questionnaire has just 9 high level questions across 6 pages, you could be a few clicks away from completing an application on behalf of your client
• Our refined question set captures even more information to help speed up underwriting
• Our questions are grouped by physical and mental wellbeing – helping your clients easily follow their application journey; plus, our Mental Health questions are aligned with ABI Mental Health Standards
• We’ve increased our maximum benefit level on Protect to £61,250 per year covering up to £100,000 gross annual income, welcoming higher earners in securing cover with us.

Explore our cover – Get a Quote here.

Explore our Adviser Toolkit here.

For any questions, support or training, please contact our Sales Team at sales@britishfriendly.com or by calling 01234 358344.

It’s now quicker and easier for you to process Whole of Life Protection Plan applications following a recent digital transformation. Your clients will also benefit from product updates and a new value-added service.

• Policy option now integrated with IPipeline, Iress, DLP, Webline and True Potential, which will pre-populate information into OLP Connect
• ‘Changing your policy’ options offered on some rated cases

• Increased limits for ‘Changing your policy’ options

Read more on the updates to Whole of Life Protection Plan, including details about the increased limits.

Introducing your Partner First Service Team

Looking after your Protection business is at the heart of what we do, and as a valued member of our business, we would like to introduce you to your New Partner First Service Team.

You’ll now have a dedicated telephone line and mailbox giving you immediate access to your team, providing a quick and convenient way to talk to us about your business. We’ve also introduced a dedicated support line for all your pre-sale underwriting enquiries.

Click here to download your handy guide containing all the contact details and information about the team and how it will work

Our pro-active approach is tailored to help speed up the application process and get your customer covered as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your support.

Precise Mortgages and Kent Reliance for Intermediaries’ business development managers (BDMs) will be joining forces to create one dual-branded team. As experts in what both brands can offer, this fresh new approach will enable them to provide even more support, further enhancing the service we can provide to you and your customers.

One of the main things we’ve learnt from the pandemic is that you want to be able to communicate with us in a variety of ways, so to further support you there’ll also be 10 office-based BDMs on hand offering you telephony, video conferencing and webchat support.

We’ll also have 16 field-based BDMs serving both brands, as well as seven specialist finance account managers focused on supporting our bridging and commercial proposition.

The new structure will see the BDMs looking after smaller patches so they’ll be able to get to you quicker if you prefer to speak with them face-to-face. This fresh new approach will enable us to provide you with even more support, but could mean your local BDM may change. Use our search tool to find your local contact today.

It’s an exciting new step in the evolution of our offering and all part of our goal of providing best-in-class levels of service and support. We want to be recognised as the UK’s number one specialist bank and we know we can only do that by providing you with exceptional service, strong relationships and competitive propositions.

To find out more, or if you’ve got any questions, speak with a member of our sales team or call our dedicated intermediary support team on 0800 116 4385.

When securing a self-employed mortgage, the struggle is real. From strict tick-boxing to high street defeat, it’s an uphill battle.

It’s exactly why everyone from contractors to freelancers are getting a flexible new residential range from us. Our simplified range means better rates are more accessible to your clients.

Take a look at what we’re doing to help you open more doors for self-employed applicants:

See the bigger picture – We look at their salary plus their share of profit before tax for affordability

Look back to step forward – We’ll consider 2019/20 figures where accounts have been covid impacted, if their most recent business bank statement accounts show a return to pre-covid levels (speak to a BDM)

Support start-ups and newcomers – We consider people who have been self-employed for 12 months and consider applicants with just 3 months of contracting work (with 12 months previous employment in a similar role)

Discover our next generation residential range today – https://themortgagelender.com/residential

Teachers for Intermediaries

Help your clients to have their cake and eat it

THE CASE
With a growing young family the clients wanted to move for additional space whilst staying in the same area of London. Having found the right property for their needs they were keen to secure it before the opportunity was lost, selling their existing home separately once the purchase was complete.

THE PROPERTIES
The current home was valued at £2.3m, with the purchase price of the new larger property agreed at just under £3 million.

THE FINANCIAL DETAIL
Whilst both applicants worked as City barristers, one partner was just returning to work after an extended period of maternity leave. Both earned significant six figure salaries as salaried members of LLPs.

THE SOLUTION
Despite an extended period of maternity leave, it was clear the applicant had a history of earning at a high-income level and the combined incomes plus bonus met affordability requirements.

We agreed on a short-term interest only ERC free mortgage to release capital and raise equity against their existing home, with funds being used to provide a deposit against the new property. Once the former home was sold the clients planned to redeem the mortgage in full.

Over the last few years, we have watched as more and more companies across the globe have joined the mission to become carbon neutral.

A survey conducted by Ipsos MORI revealed that 85% of UK adults are now worried about the climate crisis*, and the UK is now working towards a target of net-zero emissions by 2050.

That’s why in December 2021 we, at MPowered Mortgages, launched our new ECO EPC range, rewarding landlords who are purchasing or remortgaging a property with an EPC rating of A, B or C. The benefits include lower rates and free valuations (for a limited period).

With the Governments proposed changes to provide a minimum ‘C’ EPC rating for all new tenancies by 2025, landlords are now faced with the task of ‘going green’ – and doing so quickly. But is improving a property’s EPC rating to reach minimum energy efficiency standards sustainable or unattainable?

Read the full article here.

Source: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/high-levels-concern-about-climate-change-scepticism-whether-britons-will-change-behaviours