We’ve updated our Mortgage Lending Policy

We’ve updated our Mortgage Lending Policy

We’ve updated our Mortgage Lending Policy, including changes to our Prime and Near Prime lending criteria — these will be in place from 23rd February 2022.

What are we changing?

There are few changes to our Prime and Near Prime lending criteria:

Increased maximum LTV for Near Prime products from 75% to 85%

We have introduced a higher max LTV for our Near Prime mortgages by offering 80% and 85% LTV products, with 2 and 5-year fixed options available.

This change will give customers with less-than-perfect credit even more options when securing a mortgage, with the choice of a lower deposit available.

Increased LTI for Prime and Near Prime mortgages up to 90% LTV

We’ve increased our loan-to-income (LTI) ratio from 4.49x to 5.5x income for applicants who are mid to high earners (have over £60K income) when they apply for a mortgage up to 90% LTV.

This has been introduced for both single and joint applications, so customers applying for a joint mortgage will benefit from an LTI increase when their combined income exceeds £60K, rather than both applicants needing to reach the threshold individually.

We will also accept variable income within the threshold, as long as it’s within our variable income policy — we will assess affordability based on 50% of this income, in line with our lending criteria.

The LTI increase is only available to applicants in permanent employment and hasn’t increased for contractors or self-employed applicants.

General affordability improvements

We’ve made some general, background affordability improvements to increase the loan amounts that we can offer our customers.

Is anything else changing?

Alongside our Mortgage Lending Policy changes, we’ve made some updates to our rates and product end dates:

• We’ve reduced Near Prime rates by up to 0.15% across the range
• We’ve removed Near Prime cashback and limited edition options
• We have extended Near Prime end-dates to 31st May

If you have any questions about these updates, please contact our TBDM team by email at support@digitalmortgages.net or by phone on 0333 399 0055 (9am–5pm, Mon–Fri). Alternatively, you can contact your RDBM.