There’s no doubt that the Mortgage Market Review and the subsequent changes made to regulation were way overdue to constrain some of the risky lending practices and unaffordable borrowing.

However, tighter lending restrictions have had some negative consequences for some, especially those with complex circumstances.

People defined as having ‘complex circumstances’ could be those who are perhaps self-employed, customers looking to raise capital for non-traditional lending purposes – such as the payment of a tax bill – those with complicated income streams, older customers looking for a mortgage past retirement age and those who could be defined as a ‘victim of circumstance’ ie a person who perhaps fell on bad times and struggled with their financial commitments, but is now up to date. 

Unfortunately, people such as those listed above would struggle to find finance in the conventional way. This is generally due to high street lenders utilising computer-scoring systems that would automatically fail these types of customers, despite them being no less creditworthy – just a little more complicated. What I hope, however, is that advisers do not leave these customers high and dry as well. There ARE options out there for customers like these to raise the finance they need, especially from specialist lenders such as Shawbrook, who have people in place to assess the merits of each case, rather than relying on arbitrary scores. What’s more, products from specialist lenders are now easy to research using sourcing systems, making the recommendation of an alternative lending solution to customers easier. Alternatively, if the adviser would prefer to recognise the opportunity, there are specialist master brokers who can package the cases for you.

Quite often customers with more complex circumstances are described as ‘hard to place’ cases, however, now that specialist lenders and expert brokers, products and systems are in place, there really is no excuse to not find these customers a suitable alternative finance option that suits their individual needs. All that is required is a bit more time and knowing where to look.