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Vida ups proc fees and triples product range alongside brand refresh
Vida Homeloans has expanded its product range, brought out product tiering and increased procuration fees to better cater for brokers with complex credit clients.
It has increased its proc fees for buy-to-let and residential to 0.6 per cent, up from 0.5 per cent and 0.45 per cent respectively. It has also upped its packager proc fee to one per cent, which is up from 0.8 per cent.
The range has increased from 90 to 270 products. This is a 69 per cent split between residential products and 31 per cent buy-to-let products.
It has also introduced additional product tiers to allow more effective pricing.
Speaking to Mortgage Solutions, Richard Tugwell (pictured), director of mortgage distribution at Vida, said some consumers had been finding it more challenging to secure a mortgage on the high street as their income had become more complex, and they had more credit impairments.
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He said: “We knew that we needed to look at our proposition and extend it to cover more bases to give brokers more of a chance to get their clients’ needs satisfied first with a vendor like Viva.”
He added that brokers were increasingly using criteria sourcing and product sourcing systems, so expanding its product range gave them more opportunity to “hit those bases”.
He added that expanding the product range would allow the lender to become more “nimble” as it could “dip in and out of different areas” like Help to Buy and key workers, and react to market need.
The increase in proc fees is also in response to higher numbers of complex credit cases, as it would take brokers longer to advise and package on those cases, so it wanted to “recognise that in the remuneration that we give them”.
Tugwell said the feedback on its intermediary product switch portal, which it launched last year allows brokers to complete a product transfer in less than 15 minutes and had so far been “massively positive”.
He added that the lender had plans to further expand its sales team over the next few months, and said specialist lenders were becoming increasingly popular with brokers.
Tugwell said: “If I was a broker, I would be thinking specialist. A high street business development manager can tell you the rate, you know if it will fit or not, whereas a specialist lender business development manager can talk to you about solutions.
“I think that’s where a number of brokers, and the clubs and networks as a whole, they’re recognising the fact that if you’re a reasonable size brokerage you can’t ignore the fact that you’re not going to get everything from the high street.
“From a rate point of view, if you can go with a high street lender you will, but if your leads fall outside the high street, don’t use specialist lenders as a last resort. Realise early on whether a specialist lender solution is the thing for your client.”