Mike Walters

2019 — An exciting year in challenging times




Our combined mortgages and bridging division provides brokers and customers with a range of long- and short-term property funding solutions.

As well as offering more choice, the nine-strong sales and relationship support team supports brokers across most of Great Britain.

The decision to deploy multi-skilled BDMs far and wide, combined with several product and service enhancements, has certainly paid off. The team works with around 1,000 brokers and introducers between them, with that number increasing daily. Our business volumes have seen strong growth throughout this year as a result of increased broker support, both regionally and in the traditional London/South East hotspots, and because of a number of exciting changes to our offering.

In the last few months, we have launched new products and services and made enhancements to our existing range. Our most recent service improvement for mortgages is the launch of facial recognition ID verification provided via a smartphone app through Nivo Solutions. The new system, which is now live and integrated with UTB’s application system, takes only 90 seconds to complete and is available for all UTB first charge customers and selected second charge customers requiring loans over £100,000.

The service is quick and free and removes the previous requirement for certified ID, usually provided by a solicitor, thereby saving customers time and inconvenience.

Earlier this summer, we unveiled our new residential remortgage product, offering customers who don’t suit a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach a quick and competitive alternative. Features such as no minimum credit score, automated valuations (AVMs), no borrower legal representation and no application fees aim to keep customer-facing costs down while speeding up the application process for borrowers. 

We’ve also made some exciting changes to our bridging offering. We have increased the use of AVMs, extending their use for loans of up to £1m that are below 55% LTV and we’ve increased the availability of dual legal representation for certain regulated loans. We also introduced a new 75% LTV price band for first charges.

It has been a very exciting year to date. Despite continuing Brexit uncertainty and political turmoil, we are forging our own path, developing and expanding UTB’s mortgage and bridging businesses to ensure that we offer brokers and customers the products they need and the service they deserve both now and in the future.

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