Accord Mortgages has changed its criteria to add more options to the types of acceptable income it will consider when deciding how much to lend to a potential borrower.
The move was designed to help underserved borrowers, including zero-hours contractors, limited company directors and people receiving certain benefits.
Introduced today, the additions included utilising a share of net profits for self-employed limited company directors and income from zero-hours contracts for specific key workers, as well as some benefits, offering brokers more options to help their clients to meet affordability requirements where their income is sustainable.
As part of the changes, 100% of limited company directors’ salary and share of profits is now allowable as an alternative to their directors’ salary and dividends, where they have more than a 50% shareholding in their company.
In addition, 60% of zero-hours contractor income will be considered for the following key workers: NHS bank nurses and locums, care home workers, supermarket employees, HGV drivers, retained or on-call firefighters, armed forces reservists and supply teachers.
Annuities were also included in the Accord criteria changes, as up to 100% of this income can now be considered by the lender.
The changes apply to buy-to-let (BTL) as well as residential mortgage applicants, where their personal income is being factored in for top slicing purposes.
Nicola Alvarez (pictured), senior manager of new propositions at Accord, said: “We’ve listened to our brokers and researched the market to pinpoint some of the measures that can best help them to help their clients who have more complex incomes, while continuing to lend responsibly.
“This builds further on our commitment to common-sense lending, and we hope this latest list of changes provides some additional flexibility to assist more brokers to support people in achieving their homeownership aspirations.”
