The lender said it will make the final changes to its systems to ensure residential mortgages are fully MMR compliant on Monday 21 April.
In a note to brokers Virgin Money said changes to its affordability calculations were made in December and cases submitted since then will not need to be reprocessed under the new rules.
From Monday 21 April all pipeline and future cases where a material change is needed during processing will be referred back to brokers to discuss with their clients.
Any incomplete paper applications will not be accepted and will be returned to advisers as Virgin Money will not complete the missing information on a broker’s behalf for any cases.
Any new non-advised applications received by close of business on Thursday 17 April will be allowed to continue under that level of service for a period of three months from 26 April.
In all cases where a client is paying their product fee separately rather than adding it to the loan, the fee must be paid at the point of application. This fee will be refunded if the application does not complete. If the fee is being added to the loan, there is no change.
From 26 April, Virgin will begin accepting execution-only applications in addition to the usual advised mortgage business. Execution-only will be restricted to specific customers and will come with certain qualifying criteria:
– High Net Worth customers – Require a signed written statement from a suitably qualified professional adviser to the applicant confirming the FCA’s High Net Worth definition is met. Whilst Virgin will accept HNW applications on an execution-only basis, it will not be able to provide bespoke KFIs or offers in accordance with the ‘tailored provisions’ rule in the MMR.
– Mortgage professionals – Virgin requires credible evidence the applicant meets the definition of a mortgage professional. For example, for a mortgage adviser it would need to see evidence of their professional qualification, such as the CeMAP certificate.
– Existing Virgin Money customers porting – These applications will only be available on a straight balance swap basis. Any porting cases requesting additional borrowing must be on an advised basis, unless the customer meets the High Net Worth or mortgage professional criteria.
For all execution-only applications Virgin Money will need confirmation from your client that they understand they will not benefit from the protection of a broker’s recommendation and are happy to proceed on an execution-only basis.
