Speaking at The Specialist Lending Event in York, Masthaven managing director of mortgages Matt Andrews said brokers needed to be aware of the growing population of self-employed people who would be looking to find a mortgage.
And he highlighted that according to Office for National Statistics data, fewer people are leaving self-employment than before.
“So they are tending to stay in it for longer, and lenders want to find ways to help,” he said.
Andrews continued by adding that it was worrying many older people were basically resigning themselves to having to work longer, but perhaps not being able to do a full-time role anymore.
“That’s all about lenders having to innovate for the older generation,” he said.
“We’re looking at it, but I won’t stand here and say what we’re going to do yet. We’re looking at it, other lenders have to recognise the fact there are some challenges in our population – it’s a call to action rather than a solution.”
Rapidly growing curve
Overall, Andrews added that brokers must be aware that the self-employed were a very important and growing client base.
“The self-employed is a rapidly growing curve,” he said.
“It’s set to grow to about 6.8m by 2021 from the data we’ve got. It’s a fast growth sector to tap in to, but I almost hesitate to call it specialist, as its pretty mainstream.
And contrary to popular opinion, self-employed people were often better paid than their fully employed counterparts, he continued.
“The number one motivator for people to go into self-employment, and this surprised me, this is ONS data, they have a 27% higher income in self-employment than employed,” Andrews said.
“The person sitting next to me doing the same job is getting 27% more income – there’s a real growth in that kind of change to self-employment.”
