Inform Friday 22nd October 2021

In order to help improve the efficiency of your business we are implementing a new process of paying commission for policies sold.

Currently, the commission we pay to you is in advance of the collection of the customers 1^st premium payment. The new process will move to paying commission once we are in receipt of the customer’s 1^st premium.

This change will take effect from 1^st November 2021; any business completed after this date will be subject to these new payment terms.

We have updated our Terms of Business Agreement relating to the new commission payment terms.

Please click on the link here to find a copy of the amendment to Terms of Business Agreement and Terms of Commission.

We are doing this to help improve your cashflow management and reduce transactions and reconciliations relating to commission payments.

Closing date for entries 22 October 2021

There are just days to go before entries close for the Business Quality Awards. So if you haven’t entered yet, now is the time to nominate yourself for our Outstanding Customer Outcome award.

This award recognises businesses who over the last 12 months have delivered an excellent end-to-end client experience, while also adapting to the challenges that recent times have presented.

We’ve got to hand it to you, you’ve been there for your clients. Don’t miss your chance to receive recognition of this great work and join in a special celebration.

Submit today.

Halifax has teamed up with the Energy Saving Trust to give you a home energy saving tool. It helps you to find out just how green your home is and shows you how a few changes could make your home more friendly to the environment.

How does the tool work?

Home Energy Saving Tool | Home By Halifax | Halifax

Source Insurance have recently launched a Marketing Hub for brokers and intermediaries wanting to expand their client base of General Insurance customers. The hub contains links to over 70 design templates, which brokers can download and use as they wish.

What’s included?

• Design variations to suit your business branding
• Choice of campaigns to align with your business focus
• Completely free and unlimited usage of the templates
• Editable to personalise with your own contact details

Drive clients to your business

When deciding to market your business, it can be difficult to know where to start. There are so many options to consider, for example:

• Who is your audience?
• Which channels should you use?
• How often should you make contact?

“One of the best ways to share your message is visually. The use of posters, flyers and social media imagery can easily portray a message to your prospective clients, but it needs to be done right. Which is why Source have created this range of templates, with varying designs, so that brokers can choose what works best for their business.” – Lee Denton

Visit Source’s Marketing Hub, to access a range of marketing templates and guides for you to promote your business.

The hub will be updated regularly to suit trends in the industry and seasonal topics, so brokers are encouraged to keep checking back for more.

Access the full range of marketing templates and customer eBooks by visiting https://www.thesource.co.uk/marketing-hub/

As an expert master broker, Vantage Finance has a wealth of experience and expertise to help your clients achieve their financial goals.

Our team combine experience with expertise to confidently deliver:

• Complex Buy-to-Let
• Bridging Finance
• Commercial Finance
• Secured Loans/2nd Charge Mortgages
• Development Finance
• Specialist Residential 1st Charge Mortgages

Why choose Vantage?

• We provide a consistently quick service; cases are acknowledged within 30 minutes, and we strive to deliver indicative terms within 4 hours.
• To ensure a smooth process, we offer you one dedicated point of contact all the way from your first enquiry to completion.
• Our company values – efficiency, expertise, communication, and determination – shape everything we do.
• Our extensive lending panel stretching across the high street, challenger banks, specialist lenders, and private banks, enables us to offer you unrivalled access to a wide range of products and rates.
• We provide a lifetime guarantee – if your client returns to us, you’ll always receive a referral fee.

Contact the team to find out how we can help you solve even your most complex client cases:

T: 01753 883195
E: enquiries@vantagefinance.co.uk

As you may know, we have introduced our new series of Tech Tips. Now here’s a fresh batch – and they’re all about how we don’t like limits.

We can lend up to £5 million with no limit on the number of properties in the landlord’s portfolio. That’s potentially very useful for your larger portfolio clients as well as companies and LLPs. And we’re open to remortgage cases, too.

1. We’ll lend up to £5m with no limit on number of properties
2. We can refinance a property within 6 months of the original purchase and can consider a day one re-mortgage of the property based on the original purchase price where the client has bought in cash or purchased the property
3. LTV limits exclusive of TML fees, which can be added to loan
4. Minimum loan £25,001 (unless product states otherwise)
5. Speak direct to our underwriting and portfolio teams once you’ve submitted a case

Life doesn’t come with limits, so we try to make sure our lending doesn’t, either.

See their products

Our approach to self-employed income – a webinar from LiveMore

We are hosting our first ever underwriting webinar! Join us on October 26^th at 12:30pm for our 30-minute webinar on our approach to self-employed income.

The webinar will be hosted by: Matthew Evans – Head of Underwriting

During the webinar, Matt will cover a brief overview of LiveMore and the underwriting team, as well as what we look for when using self-employed income.

We will also cover;

• Types of scenarios we are likely to consider (non-exhaustive)
• A self-employed case study of a borrower who we were able to help
• Types of scenarios we are less likely to consider (non-exhaustive)
• A live Q&A at the end of the session

We encourage attendees to ask questions during the event, but if you would like to provide us with any questions you have in advance, please supply when registering below. We will do our best to get through as many as possible.

Register here for FREE

The team at LendInvest has refreshed criteria as part of its evolving Buy-to-Let offer. On top of this they have a new, lower-rate catalogue that rewards landlords investing in energy efficient properties. See all of the details of the new range here.

Clear & Flexible Range
Versatility has four tiers of lending shown in our criteria guide below.

Individual Approach
A case-by-case approach with underwriter assessed DIP available.

Fixed & Discounted Rates
For each tier of lending we currently offer a fixed rate and discounted rate product.

Here’s an example of debt consolidation and downsizing on a windmill:

• Remortgage with debt consolidation and capital raising (credit cards and home improvements)
• Unusual property type – windmill with restrictive covenant
• Interest only with property downsizing on a 6 year term

Interest only with downsizing, debt consolidation and capital raising are available on our prime residential range. This case was completed on our Versatility range given the restrictive covenant and the unusual property.

You can also take a look at our Versatility criteria guide to see what we can do for your clients. The guide now covers lending on residential properties in Scotland.

Criteria Guide.

For more information about our products and services, including our affordability calculator and applying through our online portal, visit our website at mansfieldbs.co.uk/intermediaries.

Do you have an Expat case you need to place? Vida can help!

Take a look at our key Expat criteria below:

• We serve British citizens living or working in selected EEA or worldwide countries
• Up to 75% LTV for all countries (except Australia 70% LTV)
• Expats located outside of EEA, the minimum property value is £150k
• Loans up to £1m
• First time landlords accepted
• UK registered SPVs accepted where at least one director or shareholder is an Expat
• HMO/MUBs accepted
• Ex Public Sector houses and flats (including flats above commercial premises) considered
• New builds
• Range of tenancies accepted: AST, Corporate, Student and DSS/DWP
• We lend on properties across England, Wales and Scotland

Call our Telephone BDM Team now on 03300 246 246 to discuss your next case and see how we can help.

Over *50% of all UK adults don’t have protection in place. That’s why we’ve made our Personal and Business protection more inclusive, simpler to explain to your clients and easier to access.

We’ve reduced our number of critical illness conditions whilst widening the scope to offer comprehensive cover for your clients. For clients with previous health conditions, in particular mental health conditions, we offer cover to **95% of customers who disclosed a mental health condition. And of those, **85% will be accepted at standard rates for life cover meaning the price quoted is what your client pays.

_{*FCA, Financial Lives Survey, 2020, **Scottish Widows, 2020}

Our personal and business protection is now more inclusive, simpler to explain and easier to access.

Learn more.

We are delighted to announce the launch of fixed early redemption charges (ERC) for new applications for our Lifetime Mortgages from Thursday 21 October.

This new feature will be available alongside our current Gilt ERC basis giving advisers even more choice for their customers.

Key Points

Product & Pricing

• At this time there will be no difference in interest rate, LTV scale available or other product features between the two ERC types.
• The fixed ERC basis lasts for 15 years on a sliding scale starting at 9% in year 1.
• Current ERC exemptions which apply to Aviva gilt-based plans will also apply (where applicable) to fixed ERC based plans.

Illustrations:

• These can be obtained for either ERC basis via the usual channels.

Applications:

• There is no change in process, our “Personal Quote Summary” details the ERC basis applied for.
• Where an application has already been made and adviser wishes to change from Gilt to Fixed ERC basis the current application will need to be cancelled. A new application is required on prevailing rates.

For more detail on this product change or further information, please see our FAQs or contact your Aviva Account Manager.

Please email: equityreleasefapresales@aviva.com for new enquires or LPEQREN@aviva.com for existing applications.

I am delighted to announced that with effect from Thursday 21st October we will be enhancing our bridging proposition in Precise Mortgages.

As a result of this the following criteria changes are being introduced:

• Maximum 75% LTV on ALL products
• Standard and Light refurbishment rates from 0.49%
• No maximum loan
• £Nil AVM charge
• Minimum property value – £75k (£100k London post codes)
• Minimum term 1 month (Regulated and Non-Regulated); Max term 12 months Regulated, 18 months Non-Regulated
• Light refurbishment definition expanded to now also include:
  • Change of use under Permitted Development Rights (C3 to C4)
  • Internal reconfiguration, including property conversion up to a 6 bed HMO
  • Converting a garage to a living space, but NOT a separate dwelling i.e. granny annex
  • Converting a loft into a living space

Please also note that these changes to LTV and rate will also be reflected in the Bridging element of the Refurbishment Buy to Let products.

I hope you will agree that these are significant improvements to the Bridging proposition and any assistance that you can provide in promoting these products would be greatly appreciated and Lisa and Laurelle will be in touch with the new products literature in due course. 

If you would like to discuss this new range in more detail or require any additional support please don’t hesitate to get in touch with either myself, your dedicated Corporate Account Manager or our Specialist Finance Account Managers and we’ll be delighted to help.

Detecting and preventing mortgage fraud starts at the application stage.

It’s important to verify your client’s identity, documentation and employment details.

Please check all details in the application before submitting on Introducer Internet.

Further information…

We hope you’ve had a productive week and some of you got chance to see us at the TMA Virtual Elevate conference on Thursday last week. We’ll be out and about regularly this autumn and you can see our full list of events below.

You can read our thoughts on the BTL market in the latest edition of Mortgage Introducer magazine, its well worth a read to hear about current opportunities and challenges for landlords, brokers and lenders.

September saw us deliver some great turnaround times, with many submissions going to offer in less than 15 calendar days! October looks to be another strong month of service for you and your clients.

Our average turnaround times this month 

• DIPS assessed within 24 hours
• Valuations assessed within 72 hours
• Fully packaged applications reviewed within 74 hours
• 96% of calls answered in less than 30 seconds

Our average turnaround times are updated on our homepage each working day by 9:30am, so you will always know where you stand.