Self Employed Unfairly Penalised

The pandemic has impacted many of us in different ways. The self-employed appear to have experienced a greater drop in earnings, compared to employed workers and at the same time, it could be argued found it harder to obtain support.

During the pandemic, some lenders took a more restrictive attitude to self-employed lending, with many refusing to lend to borrowers who had managed to access the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS) as their businesses were perceived as a higher risk.

Business owners and the self-employed make up a large proportion of our clients and we are therefore very active in looking for lenders and initiatives to support this group with both mortgages and remortgages.

We are now seeing criteria starting to soften, with lenders now stating that they will actually lend to those who accessed a government grant and even some lenders open to lending to those who only have one years of accounts in place rather than the usual two minimum. 

HBSC for instance will no longer ask self-employed applicants to provide three months bank statements to prove the post-pandemic strength of their business in a revision of its criteria.

We also have access to niche lenders who may be able to lend to self-employed borrowers who have started a new business during the pandemic. Additionally, we have a number of lenders that will lend to contractors who are working through an agency for example IT professionals and those on zero-hours contracts.

If you’d like to discuss how we can support your property purchase, call our senior broker, Danny O’Keeffe on 0208 364 3444 or click the schedule a call button below to book a time slot. We encourage you to schedule a call to explore the opportunities available to you.