03 November 2009

Are you invisible to Financial Institutions?

30/10/09 - When applying for finance, if you don’t appear on the electoral roll or don’t have any credit, some lenders may consider that you don’t exist financially! This has been the bain of our lives over the past few months! In current climates, it seems that lenders only need to find the smallest of excuses to not agree a mortgage request. Historically, lenders were often more amenable if an applicant could not be located on a credit search. Today, if you have no regular credit commitments or do not appear on the electoral roll at your current address, be prepared for a knock-back.

The market has been pretty quiet this week, with only a few lenders making headlines and reducing rates. I suspect the market is still coming to terms with the impact of the FSA’s proposals for the mortgage market, as reported in last weeks column.

AToM is experiencing large numbers of ‘complex prime’ enquiries lately. One example is for an expatriate living abroad and who are working for a non international company seeking to re-mortgage a property which is currently rented out in the UK. Another example - for tax purposes - customers seeking to purchase a number of investment properties in a Limited Company name with their company structure designed purely to hold properties.
These are live examples which certainly can be placed. They just need a bit of extra thought and the location of lenders who don’t fit the normal credit scoring mentality.

Santander’s UK Banking arm, who own Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley has confirmed a profit for the first 9 months of 2009 of £1.16bn, an increase of 58% compared to the same period last year! This is positive news and indicates that the market is turning. I am sure that we will see others reporting huge profits before the year end!

No comments:

Post a Comment