The last 18 months has been challenging for us all, but at Virgin Money we really stepped up to the mark with competitive products and new propositions whilst generally keeping a service standard to be proud of.
Our processing teams and phone lines remained open meaning we could continue to process applications in our pipeline ensuring customers were left supported.
We moved all our teams to working virtually, receiving excellent feedback on how our BDMS continued support to brokers throughout the pandemic. Not only that, we restructured our teams to take this to the next level and in February we gave every broker in the country access to at least 2 BDMs giving brokers support on new enquiries and applications
We can demonstrate many great examples of where we continue to support the market and customers. Our key highlights are:
- Generous income multiples and a high tolerance for commitments and dependents when considering affordability.
- Offering Interest only mortgages and in particular Sale of Mortgaged Property.
- A strong Shared Ownership proposition which includes a donation to Crisis for each shared ownership completion.
- A strong BTL proposition with the ability to top slice and keep things simple on a like for like portfolio remortgage.
- Launched our Greener Mortgage proposition, offering discounts for New Build, Shared Ownership & Help to Buy applications where the energy rating is an A or B – whilst also working with Carbon Neutral Britain to offset carbon emissions and plant trees.
- Our service guarantee – promising to give customers £100 if we don’t issue them a mortgage offer within 10 days of us receiving a fully packaged application.
We continue to listen to broker feedback and from this we have recently:
- Increased our maximum residential LTVs to 90% for new-build houses and 80% for new-build flats.
- increased our maximum term at 95% LTV to 35 years, which means the maximum term for all of our mortgages is now 35 years
- Simplified our bonus policy making it easier for brokers to understand how much income can be used.
And we won’t stop there – we’ll continue to listen to broker feedback as we move into 2022.
But we’re also about more than that…
Our Home Buying Coach app that we launched in August last year has now been downloaded around 40,000 times and allows first time buyers to focus and plan on getting onto the property ladder. Not to mention our significant launch into the world of API’s and pre-population. We launched into market with both Lendex and APPLY, with both journeys offering full DIP and app integration.
And the cherry on the cake – we continue to offer a range of offers from across the Virgin Group to our intermediary partners. From money off holidays to discounts on entertainment. It’s our way of saying thank you.