MAS5 is a former Britannia Building Society subsidiary that became a subsidiary of The Co-operative Bank following the merger between Britannia Building Society and The Co-operative Bank in 2009.
A Topaz Finance spokesperson said the servicing of The Co-Operative Bank’s MAS5 mortgage portfolio is currently outsourced to Western Mortgage Services Ltd (WMSL), an entity of Capita.
In December 2024, Capita announced the sale of WMSL’s mortgage servicing business to Topaz Finance, saying at the time that completion was expected to take place in the second quarter of 2025.
The Topaz Finance spokesperson continued: “We’re working with Capita and The Co-operative Bank to transfer servicing of the around 4,000 live mortgage accounts in the MAS5 portfolio to Topaz.
“MAS5 will write to all affected customers with details of the transfer ahead of it taking place.”
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They added: ““Beneficial ownership of the loans will not change as a result of this transfer, with the mortgages continuing to sit in a number of securitisations.”
Topaz Finance describes itself as a UK-based mortgage lender supporting homeowners and buy-to-let (BTL) landlords and has been operating since 2006.
The company said it looks after over 100,000 mortgages and loans for customers under a number of different trading names.
According to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) register, trading names include Aspiro Mortgages, Hessonite Mortgages, Hyalite Mortgages, Bloom Homeloans, Heliodor Mortgages, Rosolite Mortgages, Siberite Mortgages, Melanite Mortgages, Jasper Mortgages, Rosinca Mortgages, Morag Finance, Zephyr Homeloans, CLS, Computershare and Computershare Loan Services.
The firm is owned by Computershare, a global financial services administration company.
A spokesperson from The Co-operative Bank said: “The Co-operative Bank currently holds the legal title to the MAS5 mortgage portfolio and this is being transferred to Topaz in a few weeks’ time.
“We’re writing to MAS5 customers in June, ahead of the transfer, to explain what will happen. The transfer is a straightforward process, and customers’ terms and conditions will remain the same.”
MAS5 has been under scrutiny in the past few years, with the Co-operative Bank told by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) in 2023 to redress mortgage borrowers who were charged increasing standard variable rates (SVRs) between 2009 and 2012.
Earlier this year, Lord Sharkey wrote to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) asking it to examine the treatment of mortgage prisoners within MAS5.
The move also comes after Coventry Building Society completed the acquisition of The Co-operative Bank at the start of this year, with the combined lender estimated to have around £89bn and four-and-a-half million members and customers across the country.
