Greg Cunnington, director of lender relationships and new homes, Alexander Hall said: “Smaller specialist lenders are working well with self-employed cases, for example, limited company directors who have put a lot into pension schemes. They can [effectively] take that back and use it for income affordability. We have a lot of clients who only have one year’s accounts who pivoted to self-employed, so a lot of the specialist market are taking those guys on.”
In a video in association with The Mortgage Lender (TML), Cunnington added: “For an intermediary, it’s just about understanding that every client is so unique, so get into the detail, get into the books, know your lenders and know where to place things, but many lenders are in a really positive place on self-employed,” said Cunnington.
Steve Griffiths, sales and product director, from specialist lender TML said: “We like to look at every area of the business to make sure we’re lending everything we can, responsibly obviously. But there are three areas. You have to understand how long has the business been trading, which window of affordability is a lender going to look at, two years, three years etc and what number is coming off the accounts and going into the affordability calculator?”
He added that TML was seeing a lot of newly-formed companies out of the pandemic or firms that only had one set of books to offer right now.
He said: “We’re always quite happy to look at businesses that have just been trading for 12 months. In terms of the time period, we always look at the most recent year’s figure, unless it’s a more Covid impacted case, which is usually more beneficial as you’re seeing an upwards curve, unlike the more traditional lenders who tend to look at a two- or three-year average.”
The panel went on to examine the fact the pandemic has produced both self-employed thrivers and survivors and the various options in the marketplace for both.
This is the first episode in a series of four videos debating this specialist market, its case complexities and the routes our mortgage advisers on the panel have taken to help clients.
Our panellists include, group editor of Mortgage Solutions, Victoria Hartley, Steve Griffiths, sales and product director, TML, Greg Cunnington, director of lender relationships and new homes, Alexander Hall and Andrew Montlake, MD Coreco Mortgage Brokers and chairman of the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries.
This is a sponsored video, with thanks to TML.
