The change will allow UK visa holders direct access to the lender’s residential product offering when at least one applicant has a permanent right to reside.
UK visa holders must be able to provide a minimum two-year UK employment history, live in the UK and have a UK address history for the last three years.
Mortgages will be available to UK-based individuals with Tier 1 entrepreneur visa, Tier 2 skilled worker visa, senior or specialist worker visa, health and care worker visa and family visa.
Paul Adams (pictured), sales director at Pepper Money, said: “As the UK continues to attract international talent across sectors like tech, healthcare and academia, it’s vital that our financial system evolves to support those contributing to the economy. By extending our product criteria to accept UK visa holders, we’re helping skilled individuals put down roots and participate further in UK life.
“At Pepper Money, we take an inclusive approach to lending, and these changes to our criteria attest to this. Enhancing our proposition to include income from UK visa holders in our affordability assessments ensures that hard-working individuals on eligible visas, who contribute to the UK economy and have established roots, aren’t excluded from homeownership.
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“This isn’t just about expanding access, it’s about creating a fairer, more inclusive mortgage market. We’re working closely with brokers to provide more options for their just-off-high-street customers, deliver market-leading service, competitive rates, and certainty of price for a significant portion of the market who are in a good position to accept this finance, but would otherwise have been overlooked.”
Pepper Money has been updating its proposition, recently re-entering the buy-to-let market having been out of the market for around three years.
