Dave Pinnington, business development director at V Loans, said the business split between prime and non-prime applicants has completely switched round in the last year.
“In 2012, we are seeing that prime cases introduced by brokers have grown to over 60% of all our applications,” he said.
Pinnington said the effect of the removal of the interest-only option by many first charge lenders and the problems many people are facing raising capital when they remortgage is driving up interest in secured loans.
Robert Sinclair, chief executive of the AMI and AFB, said: “Lenders in the first charge mortgage market have tightened lending criteria considerably in the last couple of years.
“Many have aligned their underwriting with some of the more extreme of the MMR proposals, which were never likely to see the light of day.”
He said this background combined with continuing liquidity issues in the market means that many creditworthy individuals are struggling to get a further advance from their existing lender or obtain new funding.
“This provides a great opportunity for the second charge market to support good applicants.”
