This week our Star Letter accolade is awarded to Johnny Timpson for his response to the post: SMI changes are essentially a rebranding exercise – MCI.
He wrote: “I agree with your points on Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI) and Pension Credit claimants to a point Phil, but it’s far more than a ‘rebrand’, this is a major shift to mortgage welfare that’s been in place in its current form since 1948, and indeed mortgage support existed of a fashion before it and was introduced around 1926.
“The Pension Credit SMI claimants are now being mailed and invited by Serco to apply for a loan by April 2018 or find another method of servicing their mortgage debt.
“The key issue is the mortgage resilience of working age mortgagors as the mortgage support provided by Universal Credit introduces a new condition that must be met before mortgage support becomes available, in that mortgagors must not have earned income.
“With more than 50% of mortgages joint, this does mean that two earner households do need to have an appropriate protection solution in place.”