Saffron for Intermediaries is launching a campaign designed to aid brokers in securing approvals for self-employed mortgage applicants.
This comes in response to increasing hurdles faced by the self-employed since 2020, and the ineffectiveness of ‘one size fits all’ approaches of large lenders when dealing with complex applications.
The Mortgage Broker Tools (MBT) Affordability Index revealed that one third of self-employed applications failed to meet lenders’ affordability criteria.
To enhance its understanding of these challenges, Saffron for Intermediaries commissioned an independent survey to explore self-employed individuals’ perspectives on the mortgage market and the perceived obstacles to successful applications.
The survey, which included responses from 1,000 self-employed individuals, found that 49% lacked confidence in finding an affordable mortgage lender, 19% believed in the availability of a good choice of lenders for self-employed mortgages, and 73% felt disadvantaged as self-employed individuals when applying for a mortgage.
Following recent amendments to its self-employed lending criteria, Saffron for Intermediaries is striving to make mortgages more accessible for the self-employed.
The society now accepts applicants with two or more years of trading accounts across its full range of products, with only a year of accounts required for its specialist self-employed range.
A case study from business development manager, Kelly Sjoberg, illustrates how Saffron for Intermediaries can assist with complex self-employed cases. After initially struggling to find a lender to consider her self-employed client with two years of business accounts and a low credit score, Sjoberg turned to Saffron. They quickly delivered a mortgage offer, despite the time pressure and previous lender difficulties.
A self-employed masterclass webinar hosted by Saffron For Intermediaries is now available here.
