It has also made notable changes to its criteria and cut interest rates on many products.
On its residential offering the affordability criteria for self-employed contractors has been set to day rate times 46 weeks.
Rates were cut for residential interest-only loans of more than £1m and on the joint-borrower, sole-proprietor Helping Hand range, excluding the Free Saver products.
In buy-to-let, the cap of a maximum 100 properties in a portfolio was removed and income and employment verification requirements have been reduced for self-funding BTL landlords.
Rates were reduced for first-time landlords on loans of more than £1m, homes in multiple occupancy (HMOs) and multi-unit blocks (MUBs), excluding its Free Saver.
Finally, the lender’s credit status tier structure has been simplified to make it easier for brokers to find products suited to customers with “impaired and improving credit profiles,” it said. Hire purchase payments will be treated as unsecured loans.
‘Simplify our offering’
“This is our most significant product change since we launched three years ago,” said Lousia Sedgwick, director of sales, mortgages, at Vida Homeloans (pictured).
“We want to make specialist mortgages simple and to streamline so that it’s easier for brokers to do business with us.
“We’ve always listened to feedback and made improvement and now it’s time to simplify our offering for brokers.
“We continue to see strong demand from our intermediary partners and want to continue growing our lending and offering a great service to brokers and customers,” Sedgwick said.
The changes were brought in following Vida’s launch in September of a BTL broker platform with eTech, which aimed to improve the BTL portfolio underwriting service.
