In recent days the UK government has announced plans for payment holidays for mortgage borrowers. The original proposal was for residential borrowers which has since been extended to cover Buy to Let mortgages.
As a summary for our clients, we thought it would be useful to forward the below briefing notes from the Financial Conduct Authority.
Additionally, Altura has access to each individual lenders’ position, policy, process and contact details with regards to the payment holidays. Please contact your adviser if you’d like these details for your own lender.
Proposals
- Mortgage lenders will offer an automatic three-month payment holiday for customers impacted directly or indirectly, by Covid-19
- The payment holiday will apply to customers who are up to date on their payments, not in arrears, and wanting to self-certify that they are impacted by Covid-19
- This means that lenders will not complete an income and expenditure assessment, or an assessment of alternate payment options as ordinarily required under MCOB
- This proposal will allow lenders to be more responsive to customer needs and offer forbearance in a simple way to customers in an environment where the operation of collections teams may be also impacted by Covid-19
- Customers will be made aware that interest will accrue in the holiday period and they will need to make up deferred payments in the future
- Customers who wish to undertake a full assessment of their ability to pay or financial difficulty may still do so.
Technical details
- Payment holidays are available for customers who are up to date with payments, not in arrears, and impacted by Covid-19
- The customer would contact the lender and inform them that they are impacted by Covid-19
- The lender would accept these details from the customer and offer an automatic three-month payment holiday
- No evidence will be sought from the customer
- The lender makes the customer aware that interest will accrue and will be contacted at the end of the three months to complete an assessment of the customer’s circumstances
- At the end of three months, an arrangement to pay will be agreed with the customer according to their circumstances to recover any shortfall, while ensuring that the mortgage remains affordable and sustainable
- The lender notifies the customer that if they wished to complete a full assessment now, there may be other forbearance options more suitable to the customer.
If you’d like more information about any of these issues, please get in touch. Email [email protected] or call us on +44 (0) 20 3786 7270.
