Lending criteria updates

Over the last few weeks you may have seen that we have made a number of improvements to our lending criteria, expanding the range of needs we are able to support on for your clients.

As a reminder, we've…

• Increased our maximum loan size on residential mortgages from £2,000,000 to £3,000,000 up to 75% LTV
• Extended our LTV on flats to 95% (excluding new build flats and subject to maximum loan size of £600,000)
• Improved our criteria for new build incentives, with acceptance of 5% excluding stamp duty contribution/land building transaction tax
• Increased acreage size from 3 acres to 10 acres
• Amended our criteria to accept spray foam insulation in a property, subject to certain controls.

We've also reviewed our affordability criteria to help more customers borrow the amount they need

• We have lowered the stress rate applied for customers taking a product which is fixed for 5 years or longer and/or remortgaging with no additional borrowing
• On average, this will help customers borrow up to £26,000 more
• We've also changed our affordability requirements for customers who would benefit from a higher loan to income by removing enhanced affordability requirements.